Run Mac OS X Apps On Linux?

I have the urge to commit my 24" Core 2 Duo iMac to a single Linux operating system, thus giving up the goodness of my beloved Mac OS X. I am not a stranger to Linux, but I am a stranger to running Mac apps on Linux. On my PowerPC I can use SheepShaver to run Classic apps. The Mac-on-Linux project can run OS X apps, but it requires a PowerPC, not an x86. Virtualizing and emulating are inefficient, especially given the wonderful results the WINE project has had in getting Windows apps to run on Linux. What I would like is an equivalent: a software compatibility layer that will allow Linux to run Mac OS X apps at native performance. I believe there is some additional complexity in accomplishing this. Mac OS X apps aren't just Mac OS X apps. They are Carbon. They are Cocoa. They are universal binaries. They are PPC code with Altivec. Does such a project exist yet? If not, why not?

Comments

Cocoa and Carbon

[morgan_greywolf]

Duh. The Cocoa and Carbon libraries aren't open source. Wine doesn't really emulate Windows libraries, it runs them directly. I suppose there might be some way of getting Carbon and Cocoa onto Linux, but I'm guessing that it's no easy task. And even then, you'd be subject to the same thing you are in Windows -- undocumented APIs, less-than-fully documented APIs, etc.

Wine has taken years to get as far as it has. I suspect that an 'OS X Wine' would take as long.

Re:Cocoa and Carbon

[Anonymous Coward]

Wine is an open source implementation of the Windows API, though it can use Microsoft dlls if you supply them.

An OS-X Wine would probably not take as long I suspect, due to the techniques developed in writing Wine and the fact that OS-X has BSD roots. Still, not exactly a simple project.

Re:Cocoa and Carbon

[ozmanjusri]

By the time full XP support is available in WINE, XP will be 2 generations past.

Nice troll, but Wine aims for compatibility with Win32 code, not some specific version of the OS. It already supports more than 90% of the API.

Re:Cocoa and Carbon

[morgan_greywolf]

Wine is an open source implementation of the Windows API, though it can use Microsoft dlls if you supply them.

Correct. I'm operating under the assumption that Cocoa and Carbon use Unix APIs at some level, since they sit on top of a Unix core. So as Wine is an implementation of the Win32 API, the Win32 API is just a fairly low-level API that lets you make windows and buttons and pull-down menus, access the filesystem, access task and memory management, etc., but if you want any of the niceties of newer Windows applications, like toolbars, reconfigurable menus, fancy controls, Windows media, etc., you need Windows/Microsoft DLLs that aren't a core part of the Win32 API proper. Sure, Wine provides open source implementations of some of these, but in most cases you need them provided from the application or from a copy of Windows. The analogy is not quite the same, with Cocoa and Carbon, but I think you get my point.

Re:Cocoa and Carbon

[derrida]

So according to the Ninety-ninety rule:

"The first 90% of the code accounts for the first 90% of the development time. The remaining 10% of the code accounts for the other 90% of the development time."

one may assume that full API support will arrive at 2017.

Re:Cocoa and Carbon

[somersault]

He obviously doesn't want to run their software, otherwise he wouldn't be asking for compatability layers in Linux to run other people's software without having to run a certain OS.

Quit with your trollish BS already Anonymous - I really wish you'd get a job and stop posting what seems like thousands of comments a day on /.... :o

Re:Cocoa and Carbon

[Bert64]

A wine-like system for OSX would actually be a lot easier to accomplish...
There is already something iBCS, which lets Linux run binaries from other x86 unix-like systems (SCO, Xenix etc... old stuff), and various BSD's have the ability to execute Linux binaries...
You only need to emulate the kernel interfaces, and then the user mode programs/libraries should run atop a Linux kernel just like they run on OSX's existing kernel. Then you can begin reimplementing the proprietary libraries one by one. Those libraries which are BSD licensed you can directly port the source.
All in all, a much easier job than wine.

Re:Cocoa and Carbon

[HeroreV]

Wine doesn't really emulate Windows libraries, it runs them directly. Wine implements the Windows API. Wine does not use any software from Microsoft. Windows programs are just run with the Wine implementation instead of the Microsoft implementation.

The Cocoa API is based on the OpenStep API, which has a full open specification. We've had a FOSS implementation of the OpenStep API for years: GNUstep. GNUstep has even implemented some of the Cocoa additions. Producing a Cocoa compatibility layer should be much easier than producing a Windows compatibility layer.

Re:Cocoa and Carbon

[Anonymous Coward]

people should mod down all comments that being with "Duh". Don't act like you've got some extremely obvious answer. And anyway wine doesn't run Windows libraries in the default install, it uses it's own implementation without using any Microsoft. Sure you can use Windows DLLs if they're available, but the default install is hardly "running them directly". Duh.

Re:Cocoa and Carbon

[Anonymous Coward]

Frankly Wine would be allot more useful if it worked in a manner similar to how Interix works of Windows.

Instead of being a layer on top of the Posix layer, imho, itshould run alongside it, and sit directly on top of the kernel, making it an alternate, parallel subsystem. Much like Interix is essentially a fork of OpenBSD modified to work with the NT kernel, and sit next to the win32 subsystem,rather than on it, resulting in applications for either subsystem running natively, at native performance, on the appropriate subsystem.

In which case the stuff that actually *does* work on wine, won't be as painful to use.

Re:Cocoa and Carbon

[ozmanjusri]

In which case the stuff that actually *does* work on wine, won't be as painful to use.

You do know that Wine is often faster than native Windows, don't you? http://wiki.winehq.org/BenchMark-0.9.5

Re:Cocoa and Carbon

[init100]

That you want to run Windows software does not imply that you want to run Microsoft software. Thus, you are not undermining the business models of companies whose software you want to run. Or is the fact that their software only runs on Windows integral to their business models?

Re:Cocoa and Carbon

[BobPaul]

Wine doesn't really emulate Windows libraries, it runs them directly. Wine implements the Windows API. Wine does not use any software from Microsoft. Windows programs are just run with the Wine implementation instead of the Microsoft implementation. Wine is both an environment for running native Windows DLLs and a collection of OSS clones of native Windows DLLs. If a program doesn't run on Wine, one can often copy the appropriate DLLs from a Windows machine into the .wine/drive_c/Windows/System folder to make said program work.

So, no, Wine does not SHIP with any software from Microsoft, but nothing the OP said is false, either.

Re:Cocoa and Carbon

[bytesex]

The WIN32 API is a moving target; it gets extended with every version of windows. The original poster isn't completely wrong.

Re:Cocoa and Carbon

[Random832]

There is no "Posix layer" on Linux. Most of the APIs exposed by the linux kernel to user code _are_ POSIX. It might be worth bypassing glibc, though. That you'd still have to go through the (much heavier than anything else involved) X11 system to be able to present a gui to the user would make that a wasted effort though.

Re:Cocoa and Carbon

[rvw]

Wine has taken years to get as far as it has. I suspect that an 'OS X Wine' would take as long. We could call it "O-Shine"! (or something :-P)

Re:Cocoa and Carbon

[hitmark]

and the devil is in those last 10%.

especially those undocumented ones that ms use to make office and similar look good on their own platform.

dont take me a troll for saying so. they are there, the wine devs can testify to it.

Re:Cocoa and Carbon

[TheRaven64]

Producing a Cocoa compatibility layer should be much easier than producing a Windows compatibility layer. There are a few more things required than just GNUstep. GNUstep gives source compatibility and is now fairly good at reading nib files. In order to run OS X pure-Cocoa applications you would also need a Mach-O binary loader. Linux uses ELF as the format for binaries, and so the loader can not start and link OS X applications. Next you would need to compile the Apple (NeXT) Objective-C runtime library on Linux. This is pretty easy (the code is ASPL), but currently GNUstep has problems running with the NeXT libobjc (it uses the GNU one by default).

If you did this, you could run applications that just used Cocoa. Unfortunately, a lot of OS X applications also use Carbon. There is no open source version of Carbon, although a few people have written GNUstep wrappers for the parts of Carbon which are toll-free bridged with Cocoa. You would also not be able to run anything that depends on WebKit (unless you use GNUstep's SimpleWebKit as a stop-gap), QuickTime, or any of a number of other frameworks that have not yet been added to GNUstep.

WINE has had a lot of time and effort put into it because there are a huge number of proprietary Windows-only applications that would be useful on other platforms already deployed. There are far fewer essential applications for the Mac (90%+ of computer users don't use any OS X apps, after all), and so no one has bothered. For the few apps that would be worth supporting, it is probably easier to re-write them from scratch than it is to write a general purpose compatibility layer.

Re:Cocoa and Carbon

[snoyberg]

Then they would lose the ability to be cross-platform. Linux system calls don't work on FreeBSD

Re:Cocoa and Carbon

[Vexorian]

provided MS' next OS is as good as vista, by then everybody will still be using XP anyways...

Re:Cocoa and Carbon

[jellomizer]

I think it is more of an issue that there isn't really enough interest in doing this beyond a small portion of the population. Getting Windows Apps to Run on Linux has been a long time goal, starting back at windows 3.1 and many developers have been working with windows since then and have a good understanding of the windows API and know how to duplicate the functionality. Carbon and Cocoa is yes closed source but there isn't a huge development team interested in porting Mac OS X to Linux. First because a lot of work from these developers are working in moving Linux Apps into native Cocoa apps. Many of the Popular OS X apps that they would want to run in windows also has a windows version of the software (Office, Photoshop) So it is more worth it getting the windows version to work then getting the Mac Version to work. There is also the difficulty of moving specialized code into a generic OS. Both Windows and Linux are Generic Operating systems designed to on a lot of different hardware combinations, OS X is designed only for Apple Products, this means a lot of its design is fairly hardware particular, and less focused on being general in design meaning windows API are more portable to run on X windows then OS X applications running on OS X applications. The best method may be is making a source compatible version of Cocoa and Carbon so Mac Developers will only need to recompile their code for Linux then trying to emulate it.

Re:Cocoa and Carbon

[oohshiny]

The Cocoa API is based on the OpenStep API, which has a full open specification.

"Based on" is not sufficient to create an independent, binary-compatible implementation. And, when all is said and done, there is probably a lot more reengineered documentation about Windows than there is documentation about OS X.

Re:Cocoa and Carbon

[HeroreV]

The OP said "it runs them directly" which I considered different from "it can run them directly". You do make a good point though.

Re:Cocoa and Carbon

[Sparks23]

Carbon is a sort of bizarre chimera library, which was intended to provide a compatible set of APIs between classic Mac OS and Mac OS X. So that once OS X was on the way, you could carbonize an app under Classic and have it just work on OS X. Brilliant idea, but it means Carbon isn't a close relative of anything. It's a huge library and framework (since it spanned multiple operating systems), and would basically have to be engineered from scratch.

In contrast, Cocoa is what used to be OPENSTEP; it's just been renamed. GnuStep thus provides the same stuff Cocoa does, but tends to be several years behind. (Also, GnuStep provides source-level compatibility with a given revision of Cocoa, not binary-level.)

Re:Cocoa and Carbon

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm operating under the assumption that Cocoa and Carbon use Unix APIs at some level,

That is a broken assumption, specifically the use of the word "Unix".

Some problems with this assumption:

1. Mac OS X uses a Mach-derived kernel. Thus, some Mac software uses Mach APIs. For example, many of Apple's C headers are based on Mach-specific declarations. While there are some Unixes that are based on Mach (such as the old OSF/1, or Apple's MkLinux), Mach APIs are certainly not Unix APIs.
2. Apple's kernel also introduces their own cruft to the mix. Like their own interface for devices. Someone would have to write a wrapper that uses stuff in /dev instead of this proprietary interface
3. I'm pretty sure that Apple's Cocoa binaries depend on CoreFoundation, a C API that provides most of the functionality of OpenStep's Foundation kit, but with a C interface. I think I read somewhere that someone had written a partial implementation of CoreFoundation that amounts to a wrapper for GNUstep. I think this is a good idea.

I really am tired of people claiming that Mac OS X is just like FreeBSD, or just like Unix, or saying that it uses exclusively "Unix APIs" internally. Let's call it what it is. A Mach-derived kernel with some BSD bits hacked in, and some in-house stuff that Apple developed. The most important thing to remember about Darwin is that it is schizophrenic hackjob, which makes these comparisons to "similar" systems pretty useless.

Re:Cocoa and Carbon

[arodland]

No, wine "emulates" (really reimplements) most of the core system libraries. Keep in mind that it does work and run windows apps without a native windows install. The libraries that it runs directly are the ones that ship with apps. And as others have pointed out, it's taken Wine years and a huge amount of work to reach its current state, which is still just passable. It runs a lot of things well, but somehow they're never the things that I want. To replicate the same feat for OSX, providing standins for Cocoa, Carbon, Aqua, Rosetta, and xnu would be a pretty monstrous task. And keeping up with the latest would be a bigger problem than with Wine as well; Apple keeps the releases rolling out pretty steadily, and they not-so-subtly encourage the big software developers to require the latest version.

Re:Cocoa and Carbon

[Everleet]

Then they would lose the ability to be cross-platform. Linux system calls don't work on FreeBSD

Actually, they do. And IIRC, that's the only way you can run WINE on it.

Re:Cocoa and Carbon

[Anonymous Coward]

nothing the OP said is false, either.

No, this simply is not the case. The OP said "Wine doesn't really emulate Windows libraries". But it damn well does. You can run a heck of a lot of Windows software without needing to copy a single DLL from a Windows PC. That sure sounds like it's really emulating Windows libraries to me.

Re:Cocoa and Carbon

[omfgnosis]

It might be more prudent to provide Cocoa compatibility and forego Carbon based on the knowledge that the remaining Carbon apps are cross-platform and would likely work under Wine (eg Office, Photoshop) with the notable exception of the Finder, which nobody wants to emulate anyway.

Re:Cocoa and Carbon

[Anonymous Coward]

There are far fewer essential applications for the Mac (90%+ of computer users don't use any OS X apps, after all), and so no one has bothered. For the few apps that would be worth supporting, it is probably easier to re-write them from scratch than it is to write a general purpose compatibility layer.

True. And most of the desired apps (Office, Photoshop) are also available on Windows, which is already targeted for emulation.

Re:Cocoa and Carbon

[Anonymous Coward]

Wine Is Not an Emulator. That's what why stands for. Why? Because WINE is an translator between Windows executable code and the Linux system, which is what the OP and parent were getting at. The fact that the Wine project also created a bunch of cloned Windows DLLs to implement the Windows API that's implemented in DLLs doesn't change that.

The DLLs written by the Wine project are, in fact, windows code. You can replace the native DLLs in your windows installation with some of them. That's not emulation; that's implementation.

Re:Cocoa and Carbon

[shmlco]

You guys need to get serious. It's not just Carbon and Cocoa, but Quartz and Quicktime and Core Audio and Bonjour and all of the other technologies OS X applications are based on.

You're better off running Parallels and virtualizing Linux. Performance is actually quite good and besides, how much of a hit are you going to take going the other way around, "virtualizing" OS X applications to run under Linux?

Re:Cocoa and Carbon

[neo8750]

with the notable exception of the Finder, which nobody wants to emulate anyway.

Well now I just find that hard to believe.

Re:Cocoa and Carbon

[Sparks23]

There are Cocoa-based apps which do not make use of the extended frameworks (such as CoreGraphics, CoreAnimation, CoreData, etc.), and other frameworks (such as Bonjour) are based on open source technologies, and could be recreated as part of GnuStep. Many things that are still compatible with Panther don't take advantage of those frameworks, for instance. (I will, however, agree that such apps are becoming increasingly rare as people move to take advantage of Tiger's technologies and prepare for Leopard.)

I think binary compatibility is likely to be a pipe dream without a project dedicating the amount of effort that has been put into Wine. And I agree that even source compatibility is not easily reached. But I think it is still quite possible to get GnuStep to a place that simpler Panther-compatible OS X apps will compile natively.

I think it is not necessarily the best way to port -- see previous posts I have made about 'designing the UI for your target system' -- but I was trying to address the original poster's point. Namely, that I think that porting Cocoa apps to Linux is a far more attainable goal than either binary emulation or porting Carbonized apps. :)

Re:Cocoa and Carbon

[Anthony Baby]

This is true. I've shifted as much of my video work to open-source, cross-platform apps as I can, but I still rely on Final Cut and Shake as well as Garageband. And personally, I rely on iPhoto for printing photobooks, iChat AV for video chatting, and iTunes for video podcasts only. I also have a guilty pleasure for indie Mac games of which there *are* many.

Ironically, were I decide to run Linux on my PPC, all would be fine, I can use Mac-on-Linux and a few other tools to run my apps. But PowerPC Mac has never failed me. But x86 Mac frequently pisses me off. What would Linux give me that makes me want to use it on a Mac? Stability and better memory management. I'm tired of Finder locking up as I watch window after window freeze until I have to hard reboot, risking invalid sibling links and BTree nodes that may force me to rescue the data off my drive and reformat.

Re:Cocoa and Carbon

[larry bagina]

Apple has released some of Core Foundation as open source (APSL probably).

Cocoa is written in Objective C (and the libraries are well documented). The C-based CoreFoundation is a rewrite of some of the stuff in C. Some of the data structures can be used in a cocoa app as a native Objective C object, but most cocoa apps don't depend on CF.

Re:Cocoa and Carbon

[SSG Bryan]

You left off the snark tag.

Re:Cocoa and Carbon

[Anonymous Coward]

The DLLs written by the Wine project are, in fact, windows code. You can replace the native DLLs in your windows installation with some of them. That's not emulation; that's implementation.

emulate, tr.v. - emulated, emulating, emulates

1. To strive to equal or excel, especially through imitation: an older pupil whose accomplishments and style I emulated.
2. To compete with successfully; approach or attain equality with.
3. Computer Science To imitate the function of (another system), as by modifications to hardware or software that allow the imitating system to accept the same data, execute the same programs, and achieve the same results as the imitated system.

- American Heritage Dictionary

Re:Cocoa and Carbon

[myowntrueself]

I suspect that an 'OS X Wine' would take as long.

Wouldn't an 'OS X Wine' be Cider?

Re:Cocoa and Carbon

[davesays]

I think that would be 'X Winos'

Re:Cocoa and Carbon

[yoshi3]

Webkit is open source though, why wouldn't you be able to use that?

Re:Cocoa and Carbon

[jesboat]

That depends. The things that would strike me as "Linux" things would be cases where I wanted high performance and/or stability.

Performance: obviously at least as good when not subject to virtualization

Stability: if a virtualized machine crashes, it hurts. If the host crashes, it hurts more. (This matters to me because most things that force me to restart under OSX are related to IO getting fucked up when devices disappear, so I'd much rather have OSX running inside the shelter of a VM.)

Re:Cocoa and Carbon

[grahamlee]

I agree, Mac OS X is not just another UNIX. It's SUS2003 certified, so Mac OS X is another UNIX in ways that wannabes like Linux aren't ;-)

Re:Cocoa and Carbon

[LKM]

I actually don't think there are that many "pure" Cocoa apps. Many apps use Carbon stuff as well, and part of Cocoa calls through to Carbon.

Re:Cocoa and Carbon

[TheRaven64]

In theory, yes. The OS X version of WebKit uses some Cocoa, some Carbon and some CoreFoundation. A few people (including myself) have looked at doing a GNUstep port and, while none of it would be terribly hard, it would be a lot of work.

Re:Cocoa and Carbon

[Anonymous Coward]

Cocoa is written in Objective C (and the libraries are well documented). The C-based CoreFoundation is a rewrite of some of the stuff in C. Some of the data structures can be used in a cocoa app as a native Objective C object, but most cocoa apps don't depend on CF.

I think you've missed my point entirely. If you believe they can do that without making Cocoa dependent on CoreFoundation, I've got a bridge to sell you.

The point of binary compatibility is *binary* *compatibility*. AFAIK You can't plug an unmodified CoreFoundation into GNUstep and have the objects be transparently used in both. This is not binary compatibility.

Re:Cocoa and Carbon

[Anonymous Coward]

If anyone were truly interested in making Linux and BSD SUS certified, they could probably do it. The biggest problem is that SUS certification costs money and nobody cares enough to make this worth it.

There are some non-conforming behaviors... But again, nobody really cares enough to make this an issue.

In answer to....

[Anonymous Coward]

In answer to those who ask why... its because we CAN. (you dumbassess).

Simple reasons for this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple isn't going to allow it to happen. It's very important that Mac OS be seen as part of the Mac -experience-, not something that you can install on any computer. Trust me, they would find some grounds upon which to shut down such a project if it ever became popular.

The second reason would be that the people who might work on it are already too busy trying to do the same thing for Windows applications, and unfortunately that has a long way to go as well.

Re:Simple reasons for this.

[CadetStimpy]

I agree - Apple wouldn't let much, if any, work be done on this before they intervened. IMHO, though, there just wouldn't be enough interest in running it to justify the effort. Mac users in general are pleased with their own OS. If we want to hack on Linux, we'll just use an old PC for that.

Re:Simple reasons for this.

[AvitarX]

I have some reasons it may be a worthwile project:

1) OSX uses OpenGL, so 3D may be easier to port.

2) With Creative Suite many of the profeessional grade apps people want are available on OSX (In fact at this point, I think that is a bigger show stopper than Office).

3) Since it is POSIX it may be easier to do (I don't really know, probably not much easier though).

4) The fact that both Linux and OSX use CUPS to print could help with output.

Some disadvantages are that it is a faster moving target than Windows, and that backwards compatibility is readily broken, meaning as the target moves, new apps are VERY likley to break.

Re:Simple reasons for this.

[Joe The Dragon]

Only in the US out side of it they can say what you can do with there os after you buy it. So when 10.5 comes out BUY and hack it to run on any system and apple will not be able to stop you.

Re:Simple reasons for this.

[Anonymous Coward]

And here's me thinking that no one smart enough to do the work buys anything but a mac, nor has the desire to make it anything but a mac. Why build a pool when you live in the ocean?

Re:Simple reasons for this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not everyone is happy with the closed nature of Apple products, as well as their support for DRM and software patents. I'd certainly be game to dump OS X in favor of linux if it could run my apps.

Re:Simple reasons for this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny. Because they use WINE code in parallels to do the D3D -> openGL mapping. Strangely, I don't think you're wrong.

Re:Simple reasons for this.

[General Lee's Peking]

Running Mac OS X software on Linux doesn't alter the Mac buyer's perception of the Mac experience because they've got a Mac OS X box, not a Linux box. And hopefully the average person running Linux will be sophisticated enough to understand that running Mac OS X software through emulation isn't the Mac experience either. I don't think Apple has any reason to care one way or the other.

I've got to give the most weight to your second explanation. MS Windows has a heck of a lot more software than the Mac available for it so emulation for MS Windows is far more important. Also, MS Windows is more oriented towards a system where the more software, the merrier, as opposed to the Mac which is more oriented towards an integrated environment to make working with cameras, iPods, whatever-else, easier. Emulation could better take advantage of the MS Windows model than it could the Mac.

As for any Mac OS X project becoming popular with the Linux world, I don't think that's going to happen even if Apple promotes it, much less shuts it down. The hypothesis is that the Linux developer's perception of the commercial software world is MS Windows and their goal is to move closer to that. The evidence is that NeXT actually released the standards for what is now used by Apple for Mac OS X way before Microsoft released their standards for .Net and C#; NeXT developed the Objective-C front end for gcc which Apple still supports; and GNUStep is still far less popular than MS Windows flavored projects like Gnome and KDE. The free software world worked on its own C# front end for gcc even without Microsoft helping them out. And then there's Mono, DotGNU, and so on.

If anything, Apple has actually helped the free software world move closer to what they do with GUIs, libraries and languages, not forbidden it. Looking at the free software projects out there, it is apparent, if not obvious, that the free software world has overwhelmingly chosen the Microsoft flavor of GUIs and libraries.

Re:Simple reasons for this.

[cbreaker]

"Apple isn't going to allow it to happen."

That's just silly, because they wouldn't have any say in the matter. It would be a reimplementation of the OS API's and wouldn't use Apple code. Or, are you so naive to think that if Microsoft had any say in the matter, they'd have let the WINE project just keep on truckin'?

"The second reason would be that the people who might work on it are already too busy trying to do the same thing for Windows applications"

That's retarded. Can't you think past your own little box? There's many tens of thousands of programmers out there that could do this work. Windows API's aren't similar to OSX API's. Why would you get the idea that it would be the same people doing a "WINE/OSX" as WINE, and they're "busy" working on Windows WINE?

Re:Simple reasons for this.

[silent_artichoke]

You build the pool because ocean water's much too salty to drink.

Re:Simple reasons for this.

[Anonymous Coward]

You drink pool water? Bleck!

Re:Simple reasons for this.

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems they already HAVE let it happen. Only took me about 2 hours to set up PearPC, with MacOSX 10.2, and Safari 1.3, full internet access via a bridged connection, OSX access to my Windows dirs, and Windows access to my OSX dirs ... all on that humble little O/S that you so love to slag off ... Windows XP.

Thankfully it was only for some web compatibility issues testing, as it truly sucks as an O/S.

Look, Linux is for the best server, Windows is for the best desktop, and MAC OSX is for ... elitist yuppie wannabies who like to pose in internet cafes with wifi.

Re:Simple reasons for this.

[trianglman]

Not exactly. Many other large, industrialized nations have "you protect mine, we'll protect yours" IP laws with the US. Thats why cheap knock-off drugs are illegal in most other countries, why you legally can't copy Windows and hand it out on the street in China (although thats not very well enforced there), etc.

Re:Simple reasons for this.

[civilizedINTENSITY]

"That's just silly, because they wouldn't have any say in the matter."

The real question is are there patents or is it just copyrighted? It would be possible to reverse engineer workarounds for copyrighted code, sure. If parts are patented (aqua?) then Apple would have authority to say yea or nea.

Re:Simple reasons for this.

[Joe The Dragon]

But they also have saying that Eula can not say what hardware you can install software on. So You can go out buy mac os 10.5 and put it on any system.

Re:Simple reasons for this.

[RealGrouchy]

It's very important that Mac OS be seen as part of the Mac -experience-, not something that you can install on any computer. Trust me, they would find some grounds upon which to shut down such a project if it ever became popular. Like how they recently released Safari 3 for Windows?

- RG>

Re:Simple reasons for this.

[linuxrocks123]

> I agree - Apple wouldn't let much, if any, work be done on this before they intervened.

It wouldn't be Apple's choice. An API isn't copyrightable. If M$ could shut down WINE, don't you think they would have done so by now?

Re:Simple reasons for this.

[trianglman]

The part about the EULA is also technically true in the US as well, companies don't want you to know. Reverse engineering is 100% legal, EULA or no EULA. As far as being able to put OSX 10.5 on any system, you would have to personally reverse engineer it and do the installation yourself, distributing it to someone else would infringe on copyright and possibly patent laws.

10 years

[Constantine XVI]

Wine took ten years to get where it is now, without any real documentation whatsoever.

I can guarantee you it would take at least that long to reverse-engineer Carbon from scratch. However, Cocoa is really nothing more than OPENSTEP v2. Linux already has an OPENSTEP implementation (GNUStep), so a portion of the work is done.

Re:10 years

[hitchhacker]

This would also require a re-compile on the part of the application vendor. IMO, highly unlikely. -metric

Re:10 years

[Constantine XVI]

I was talking about using the GNUStep implementation as a starting point for a WINE-like Cocoa layer. I know you can't run native Mac apps on linux yet.

Re:10 years

[ultramkancool]

Interesting thing here is that WINE hasn't actually used any reverse engineering! (although reversing probably could have accomplished the job much faster, say 3-5 years for a nearly perfect reimplementation) I once asked them about this on IRC and was almost swiftly kicked from the channel.

Re:10 years

[Abcd1234]

Why? Wine doesn't require a recompile of the executable in question. It simply does a manual load of the PE/COFF file. Creating a similar loader for the Mach-O format is probably no more difficult.

Re:10 years

[tgv]

Well, GNUstep does not really implement all of Cocoa. The datamodel and bindings (KVO, KVC) spring to mind (the Wiki says they would like to implement it, but haven't even thought about when to start). A lot of modern Cocoa apps (bindings are available since 10.3, data-models since 10.4) use that, so Cocoa is really a lot more than Openstep v2. I don't think compatibility is around the corner...

Amazing how that could be modded insightful...

Re:10 years

[LuSiDe]

10 years? Amazing. Where did you buy your crystal ball? Especially its detailed compare with WINE was in one word outstanding! My crystal ball says it'll take 10 years and 2 months, and I think mine is lying. :(

also

[Anonymous Coward]

aren't some of the cocoa/carbon binaries encrypted?

Admittedly the open source crowd has proven encryption of that style to be a show stopper of no more than 5 minutes usually, but that'd be another reason for delay.

Re:also

[Trillan]

Some of Apple's Mac OS X binaries are encrypted. However, if you're really talking about an open source clone, you have no business trying to use Apple's binaries.

Re:also

[CajunArson]

I'm not aware of any central Windows library being encrypted, that doesn't mean Wine has only taken 5 minutes to replicate Windows. I think you're barking up the wrong tree.

Re:also

[TrekkieGod]

However, if you're really talking about an open source clone, you have no business trying to use Apple's binaries.

Properly done reverse engineering isn't illegal. That might be a reason why you it would be your business to look at Apple's binaries while developing said open source clone, especially if we're talking about badly document API's. That said, it's still possible to do make the clone without it.

Re:also

[xouumalperxe]

I believe he meant that the encryption itself isn't much of a show stopper, compared with the bulk of the work involved (which dovetails nicely with your point about not taking the Wine project 5 minutes to reimplement windows libs)

iTunes

[egandalf]

All I want is iTunes compatibility. Sure, I can sync my ipod with Amarok or RythmBox, but I haven't found anything that works well for syncing video and I can't purchase music from the store. The kicker is, I would probably purchase LOTS more music if I had a solid linux port.

This will probably not happen in the near future, though. I think Apple is afraid that a linux port would get reverse-engineered and their DRM would be cracked in a week. But with their apparent success in locking down the iPhone, I find that unlikely.

Re:iTunes

[lorenzino]

Hey, is not like that once we have iTunes source you can crack their DRM. The DRM is applyed to the files only when they get to your computer, true, but with keys that anyway some program can find and crack already the files. The DRM can't be cracked, the keys can be found.Or the files read before encryption. The security of a system is not in its private source, otherwise we would have cracked public encryptiption of PGP long time ago. Bye

Re:iTunes

[dave420]

Apple are probably more concerned with the fact developing a Linux version if iTunes would cost more money than it'll make in iTunes Music Store revenus... Linux doesn't have the market share clout to command a port of iTunes as Windows does.

Re:iTunes

[Dh2000]

Who cares, anyway? We have plenty of excellent media players, already.

Re:iTunes

[Tim_UWA]

None that can stream other people's shared iTunes library over a network

Re:iTunes

[chill]

Because if your iPod has a nervous breakdown -- and there is a good chance it will -- only iTunes as the "Restore" button. Amarok can't restore a corrupt database and wil just refuse to work with the iPod. Time for a trip to the Apple store.

Now, if there is a nice FOSS "iPod Restore" tool, that would help. Integration into Amarok as a plugin or something would be even better.

Re:iTunes

[arivanov]

If they make the port reliant on the TPM/DRM support present from 2.6.14 kernels onwards - not bloody likely. In fact it is likely to be possible to lock it down considerably better than Windows where this is not native to the OS prior to Vista.

I would speculate that the reason for Apple not doing any such port is completely different. There was a recent slashdot article about Vista/Apple/etc market share based on browser stats:http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/ 23/1840206. This article has very clear stats which show that one of the primary targets of MacOS on Intel has been the desktop Unixes:http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx ?qprid=5. There is a direct correlation between the decrease of "Other" and increase of "MacOS Intel" in the graphs. I have also observed a fairly large set of converstions amidst friends and collegues in support of this trend.

If Apple ports iTunes to linux it will eliminate at least one of the market drives for these new MacOSX conversions. It is not mad to do so, so I would not expect any iTunes ports anytime soon.

Re:iTunes

[CNLohr]

Some of us enjoy paying for music. Granted about 80% of my music comes from albums that I bought, it's still nice to just get that one or two songs without buying the whole album. I'd pay big bucks for a way to download music on Linux that resulted in me officially owning the right to play that music on my computer, another computer, or in a car.

Re:iTunes

[KingSkippus]

Because of the features of iTunes that aren't in those players.

Specifically, the ability to purchase music and shows from ITMS, and its seamless integration with the Apple TV

Re:iTunes

[xaxa]

Emusic.com is a subscription service, so it might not be what you're looking for, but it's worth taking the free trial and having a go (and also getting the free tracks). There isn't much popular music, but my taste is so obscure I import most of my CDs anyway.
(I cancelled the Emusic subscription after a couple of months, I prefer to own the CDs.)

There's a few more listed on http://www.eff.org/IP/DRM/guide/ (some subscription, some pay-per-song).

Re:iTunes

[egandalf]

None, that I'm aware, will sync video files to the ipod. I wouldn't have a problem if I owned a non-video ipod, but I like having movies for flights, and right now I have to boot into windows to make that happen. Every time I do, it's like a small part of me dies amidst screams of agony.

Re:iTunes

[hey!]

I believe that the older versions of iTunes work with WINE and are supported by Codeweavers' Crossover product. Getting the iPod to sync involves playing around with some hotplug configurations as root, and is therefore not officially supported by Codeweavers, but they have instructions on their website.

YMMV, of course. Dicking around with Linux hotplugging is often a pain in the ass, when it comes to getting a non-supported device that should work to actually work. I've had numerous run-ins with wi-fi adapters and stock kernels, and to tell you the truth I'd have been better off, over the years, in just buying a wi-fi to ethernet bridge. You always can fix it, but in the total effort you expend over the years is wasted.

Re:iTunes

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux doesn't have the market share clout to command a port of iTunes as Windows does. OS X doesn't have the market share to command a port either....oh wait.

Re:iTunes

[norminator]

All I want is iTunes compatibility. Sure, I can sync my ipod with Amarok or RythmBox, but I haven't found anything that works well for syncing video and I can't purchase music from the store.
This is probably the single biggest thing holding us back from going all-Linux at home. I have mostly been pretty happy with the performance and capabilities of Floola (it's pretty good at managing videos, and allows you to update podcasts directly on the iPod, instead of updating the library on the PC, then syncing to the iPod), but it's not quite as smooth as iTunes, and sometimes, after I've synced my iPod with a new version of iTunes, anytime I copy something to my iPod in Floola, or delete something, it messes up the database on the iPod. Floola's updated very regularly, but it still makes me nervous. I would probably still go all Linux, but my wife doesn't want to let go of iTunes.

Re:iTunes

[croddy]

The Linux and OS X desktop user bases have been roughly the same size for several years now, although I believe the OS X user base has finally begun to slightly outnumber the Linux share. I think the argument you want to make here is that the technically-oriented and freedom-inclined Linux user base would be unlikely to purchase low-bitrate DRM'ed AAC files.

Re:iTunes

[Anonymous Coward]

Who are you kidding? They're just MP3s/AACs. Just fucking open them from a network share. It's not rocket science.

Re:iTunes

[jamiethehutt]

Because if your iPod has a nervous breakdown -- and there is a good chance it will -- only iTunes as the "Restore" button. Amarok can't restore a corrupt database and wil just refuse to work with the iPod. Time for a trip to the Apple store.

Plug in iPod, mount iPod, rm -r /media/ipod/*, unmount iPod, unplug iPod. The iPod will then restart and make itself a new blank database that you can fill with tracks, you'll need to copy everything again but it'll teach you not to unplug your iPod during writing. :-P

Re:iTunes

[Hatta]

How about not buying hardware that ties you to a specific platform for no reason? If you buy a product locked to proprietary software on specific operating systems, don't complain when it doesn't work anywhere else.

Re:iTunes

[Anonymous Coward]

You sure about that, GNUpod seems to be able to do that if I am reading the documentation correctly.

http://www.gnu.org/software/gnupod/gnupod.html#SEC 18

Re:iTunes

[soft_guy]

Have you tried to run iTunes for Windows under WINE?

Re:iTunes

[massysett]

but I haven't found anything that works well for syncing video and I can't purchase music from the store. The kicker is, I would probably purchase LOTS more music if I had a solid linux port.

Of course you can buy music. Recent versions of Amarok have Magnatune built right in. You can buy high bitrate MP3s or even FLACs. iPod won't play the FLACs, but you can easily transcode them into whatever MP3 bitrate you want.

Oh, you mean you can't buy things from the major record labels? OK, fair enough. I don't buy their stuff because they do not make it convenient for me to buy it. They want me to buy a plastic disc or get encumbered computer files. But if convenience is important to you and you don't mind jumping through the dual hoops of iTunes and DRM, then by all means just stick with OS X.

Re:iTunes

[chill]

The iPod was purchased with the intention of putting Rockbox on it. As it turns out, I do not like the click-wheel interface. Yes, Apple fans, I'm in the minority, but I still don't like it. It was given to my daughter to play with and moved lower on my priority list to convert.

I'm in the process of getting a Toshiba Gigabeat, again with the intention of putting Rockbox on it.

Most of my music is in .OGG or .FLAC format, neither of which the iPod can handle without conversion. Amarok does conversion on the fly, which is slick.

Re:iTunes

[chill]

1) It automounts already. :-)

2) Thanks! I didn't know anything about the iPod file format, so was afraid to start doing things like that. In truth, I was looking for an excuse to go to an Apple store. I'd never been in one and was curious. In hindsight, I probably shouldn't have worn the "Dell" t-shirt and the "Linux" baseball cap. I got lots of dirty looks. :-)

3) After Apple restored it I had to reinstall everything again anyway. No love there.

4) It wasn't unplugged while mounted. It was spontaneous. One evening it worked, the next morning nothing. No computer interface in between. Strange.

Re:iTunes

[outZider]

Some people like iTunes better. :) The linux players are getting quite good, but iTunes has spit and polish that can't be touched by any of them, especially AmaroK.

Re:iTunes

[chill]

No, they maintain a separate "GnuTunesDB" but do have files to keep that in sync with the iTunesDB. Interesting.

Re:iTunes

[RockoTDF]

Err....rhythmbox does

Re:iTunes

[egandalf]

As I understand, that only works for older versions of iTunes - which to me is unacceptable.

Re:iTunes

[Anonymous Coward]

You can update from any OS that supports USB and writing to block devices (i.e, yes, Linux). See the the updating information on the iPod Linux wiki.

Re:iTunes

[egandalf]

I'll grant you the DRM 'hoop' analogy, but I enjoy iTunes as a media player/organizer. I've been currently use Amarok which is great, have tried RythmBox, Banshee, and several others, but overall iTunes is my favorite player and thus, at least for me, not a 'hoop'.

Re:iTunes

[vux984]

All I want is iTunes compatibility.

Seeing as iTunes has been ported to windows, have you explored running the Windows version of iTunes on Linux instead of the OSX version?

It seems that iTunes 6 at least has been successfully done...

http://pimpyourlinux.com/linux-feature-review/itun es-in-linux-not-any-time-soon/

Not sure when that was written, so someone may have figured out 7.

It sounds like 6 can't access the itunes store anymore; but this is certainly a partial solution. And is priobably the avenue to watch -- unlike iTunes (OSX), lots of people are actively working on getting iTunes (Windows) running.

Re:iTunes

[Anonymous Coward]

"If they make the port reliant on the TPM/DRM support present from 2.6.14 kernels onwards - not bloody likely. In fact it is likely to be possible to lock it down considerably better than Windows where this is not native to the OS prior to Vista."

First - Why would Apple do that? They don't use it on the native iTunes platform. It would be impossible since MacOS X doesn't ship with a TPM driver, and not all Intel Macs even have a TPM. (For Macs which do have one, it's known that Apple's EFI firmware doesn't interact with it either: Amit Singh wrote an open source TPM driver, and found that the TPM is left uninitialized.)

Second - TPMs probably don't do what you think they do. People who are uneducated about them often get dramatically exxagerated notions of what they are capable of. The more you learn, the less likely you are to run around screaming in terror at the notion of having a TPM in your computer. For example, despite much of the hysteria I've seen on the topic, TPMs cannot alter CPU state or otherwise interfere with program execution. They're just peripherals sitting on a low bandwidth bus. I don't think they even have DMA.

Re:iTunes

[soft_guy]

So, you DID try it and it runs older versions of iTunes but not newer versions of iTunes? And this is an unacceptable bug in WINE? Yep, sounds like a bug in WINE to me.

Re:iTunes

[Anthony Baby]

I tried out iTunes for music a while back. I think it's safe to say that the technically-oriented and freedom-inclined Linux user base would also be unlikely to purchase low-bitrate DRM'ed AAC files. There is video though, some of which is free and not DRM'ed. Sadly there is even more DRM'ed video that will play nowhere else except on your iPod on iTunes supported OS. I wouldn't have even cared about the videos sold on iTunes except for the fact that there are a few videos which are not out on DVD and will likely not be for quite some time.

Re:iTunes

[arashi no garou]

4) It wasn't unplugged while mounted. It was spontaneous. One evening it worked, the next morning nothing. No computer interface in between. Strange.

Not strange at all. I had a 1st gen Nano that did that about every two or three days, and I never plugged it into my Linux system. I only ever used iTunes for Windows with it. I'd be sitting at work listening to some music while typing away, then when the next song queued up, BAM it rebooted, shut itself down, then wouldn't turn on again. The manual reset sequence (hold on/hold off/play and center button) didn't work either. The only way I could get it to come back on was to plug it into the PC and do a restore from iTunes.

Interestingly, after two failed firmware updates, I did the manual reset sequence and tried the update again and it worked. After that it never locked up on me. I still sold it though; too much trouble from a supposedly simple device. I bought a Samsung something-or-other that worked as a mass storage device (hence, OS neutral) and never looked back.

Re:iTunes

[Enderandrew]

Everyone keeps insisting iTunes is so great, so I keep trying it every few years to see how it evolved, and it hasn't. It looks and operates just like older versions did.

I had a bunch of .wma audio, from ripping my entire CD collection into Windows Media Player. iTunes won't play it even though every other player on the planet will. It demands that I re-encode my media collection (which I ended up doing regardless back to drm-free mp3's, but that was my perogative rather than a forced mandate from my media player).

Next, iTunes didn't detect all my album art, but if offered to pull down new album art from iTunes. This would no doubt require some fighting for certain albums just like with WMP and Amarok, but I was willing to mess with it anyway, until it told me that I needed to create an iTunes account and give them my credit card to display album art for my music.

The "library" that everyone brags about is basically one giant list with a search bar. Both WMP and Amarok can provide me the exact same thing, but they also provide a variety of means to organize and browse my music in a tree-like fashion if I so desire, including album, artist, genre, rating, most frequently played, etc.

To top it all off, the big feature of iTunes is the ability to buy music directly from a store, right? People keep bragging that is what separates iTunes from the rest. Well, those guys apparently haven't noticed that both WMP and Amarok do the same thing these days, except they give you a choice of where to buy your music from.

I'm not sure where this excellent design, spit-and-polish, and "it just works" exists in iTunes. When it won't display album art, and it won't play my files, and it sports about half the features of the other two media players I use the most, I just don't get it. Maybe one of these days someone will explain it to me, but frankly I've loathed iTunes every time I've fired it up.

Re:iTunes

[Anonymous Coward]

In hindsight, I probably shouldn't have worn the "Dell" t-shirt and the "Linux" baseball cap. I got lots of dirty looks. :-)

Oh, I think you'll find that not unique to Apple stores. Most people will give you dirty looks for wearing a non-fashion corporation's clothes. same goes for software related clothes. it just screams out "I lack friends"

Re:iTunes

[brantondaveperson]

Meh.

Try creating some smart playlists. Try creating smart playlists that depend on other smart playlists. They're kind of cool.

Also, don't be scared of the itunes account. As far as I know you could probably get away with an invalid or expired cc number - since they don't charge it until you actually buy something. The downloaded album art is actually pretty nice and works really well. They're adding new ones all the time, and it's always nice when new album art appears on my iPod.

But no, there's no 'tree-like' view. Which IMHO is a good thing because if there's any UI innovation that I despise, it's the 'tree view'. Hate hate hate them.

But I will say one thing, you are quite right in that iTunes hasn't changed much at all in quite a few years, whereas WMP and the others have all experienced significant upgrades in functionality.

Not that I'd touch WMP with a barge pole ;-)

Re:iTunes

[Enderandrew]

I make plenty of online purchases. I'm not afraid of using my CC online. I was just put off that album art would require it.

I didn't experiment with playlists too much, because I seem to be unlike most people. I've created a variety of playlists in the past, but I'm generally pretty fickle. When I want to hear a particular album or song in a given moment, I don't feel that it is a bother to quickly queue it up, where I would rarely listen to the same rotation of songs in a playlist, unless I'm queueing up a genre and hitting shuffle or something.

For my money, Amarok is my favorite player. I wish it would fully support video, and apparently Amarok 2 will have basic video support, but it focuses on the most important aspects IMO.

1 - With previous media players, I spent ages organizing my media library and adding info. With Amarok, it automates this process far better than any other media player I've seen, even adding Last.fm recommendations, lyric search, wikipedia entries, etc. In certain ways it is the most powerful, feature rich player I've seen.

2 - Conversely, it doesn't get in its own way. Loading files into your playlist is quick and simple. There are multiple ways to find what you're looking for. I hate in WMP how the default behavior (though it can be changed with a registry entry) is to load a Media Guide of some advertised content. I don't care. I'm loading up my media player so I can play my media. I don't want to waste time jumping through menus, or dealing with BS. I want to load it quickly, get to my music quickly, minimize the player to my tray, and get on with my business.

Re:iTunes

[james968]

You can install CrossOver Office and then run the WINDOWS version of iTunes. (Or download wine and install it from there, though that might require some tweaking).

Re:iTunes

[Anonymous Coward]

That one should be +5 Funny, not +4 Insightful

Re:iTunes

[mattatwork]

I think technically-oriented and freedom-inclined Linux users would know that iTunes offers DRM free music at 256 kb/s and has done so since May 2007.

Re:iTunes

[commanderfoxtrot]

VMWare?

You can, I believe, boot the dual-boot partition with VMWare as well.

Purpose.

[saintlupus]

I have the urge to commit my 24" Core 2 Duo iMac to a single Linux operating system, thus giving up the goodness of my beloved Mac OS X.

Why?

It seems sort of silly to deliberately kneecap yourself like this. Generally, you only see this behavior in serious FLOSS zealots. They're the ones not trying to run closed-source Mac OS X applications.

--saint

Re:Purpose.

[denali99755]

i agree, and i'd add that if i wanted to run linux, the last thing i would do would be pay the premium for apple hardware. sure, it's pretty looking, but wouldn't you rather be able to replace just a small part of it if something breaks?

Re:Purpose.

[chuckymonkey]

I prefer to think of myself as a dark templar. Anyway, isn't there a way to compile linux apps in Mac? For the most part I think as a desktop OS Mac is better anyway.

Re:Purpose.

[NDPTAL85]

You can. Welcome to 2005.

Re:Purpose.

[saintlupus]

Flamebait? Fucking crackhead mods.

The guy refers to "my beloved Mac OS X" and then goes on and on about how he wants to get rid of it, but can't leave behind the application support. Why?

"Dear Slashdot, I've got this urge to kill my beloved wife. Could you please tell me how to do it, and how to simultaneously make her sister as hot as she is and have her marry me instead?"

What the fuck is he trying to gain?

--saint

Re:Purpose.

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, okay...

Please stop the Hans Reiser bashing right now.

Re:Purpose.

[Lemmy Caution]

...

No way. You didn't... just... compare...

He wants to run Linux as his primary OS, or at least experiment with it. There's nothing wrong with it. That you see this as a kind of homicidal impulse is bizarre to say the least - is this a symptom of your fanatical devotion to an OS?

Re:Purpose.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hah! You're funny. Did you miss the point on purpose? Or do you just not have a sense of humor?

By the way, he doesn't want to just run Linux as his primary OS, he wants it to be his *only* bootable OS. You'd think that somebody with an ID as low as yours would know what dual booting is.

Re:Purpose.

[Lemmy Caution]

It's a little funny as hyberbole, except that the sentiment which informs it is itself hyberbolic, making it, um, less funny.

And yes, that's the point. He wants to stop dual-booting. So what?

Re:Purpose.

[antifoidulus]

"Dear Slashdot, I've got this urge to kill my beloved wife. Could you please tell me how to do it, and how to simultaneously make her sister as hot as she is and have her marry me instead?"

Didn't Hans Reiser submit that story?


Sorry, that was in poor taste :P

Re:Purpose.

[saintlupus]

He wants to run Linux as his primary OS, or at least experiment with it. There's nothing wrong with it. That you see this as a kind of homicidal impulse is bizarre to say the least - is this a symptom of your fanatical devotion to an OS?

I don't understand why the original poster would refer to OS X as "beloved" and full of "goodness", and then ask for help in getting rid of it while explicitly requesting that the applications still run under Linux. If you want an OS that runs OS X applications, run OS X. If you want one that runs Linux applications, run Linux. If you want to run both sets, dual-boot or use a solution like Parallels. But the original question makes no sense.

The wife-killing metaphor, yeah, that was a bit much. Pre-coffee I tend to be a little sarcastic. Whoops.

--saint

Re:Purpose.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand why the original poster would refer to OS X as "beloved" and full of "goodness"

to get the story past a certain type of zealot editor-bombing? or even (once it was up) to try and preempt exactly your type of stupid question in favor of some, you know, actually useful replies?

while explicitly requesting that the applications still run under Linux.
perchance he likes some apps that would be convenient to keep? like, commercial ones for which he has bought a license, but they have no OSX version?

If you want to run both sets, dual-boot or use a solution like Parallels. But the original question makes no sense.
Oh, I don't know, perhaps convenience? Dual booting requires more disk space and breaks workflow? Parallels wants more RAM pon top of more disk space? Or it's too much CPU overhead for his type of workloads?

I'll resist the urge to end with an ad hominem about Mac trolls and instead urge you to think before adding to the noise/signal ratio. As a hint, requiring that other people's lives would fit in the same box as yours does not qualify.

Re:Purpose.

[Frumious Wombat]

Spend a little money on Parallels (or be a guinea pig for VMWare), or just run bootcamp for a while. The last would be most informative, as you could clock which one gets booted into more often and for longer periods. You could also stretch yourself a bit and run Solaris 10, or one of the BSDs, since there's more to PC unix than the various Linuces. More sensibly, open up a terminal, dredge the ports sites, or just learn to compile and install the bits of Linux you actually care about.

If you've decided your politics or wallet won't support OSX software, then more power to you and your decision, but it seems silly to pay the Apple tax and then run desktop Linux on your machine full time. This is kind of "I bought a BMW, and then put the 4 cylinder engine from a Ford Escort in it".

Of course, people claim to have booted and run PPC Ubuntu on IBM 590s, rather than AIX, so what do I know?

Re:Purpose.

[at_slashdot]

I asked him and he said: "my wife is beautiful but she doesn't want to fuck me more than once a month, her sister (while butt-ugly) wants to do it all the time"

Duh!

Re:Purpose.

[Suzuran]

Needs moderation "+5 Terrible".
I'm going to hell for laughing at this... Good show!

Re:Purpose.

[RAMMS EIN]

``It seems sort of silly to deliberately kneecap yourself like this. Generally, you only see this behavior in serious FLOSS zealots. They're the ones not trying to run closed-source Mac OS X applications.''

Well, guess what? Open source does have some advantages beyond the warm fuzzy feeling you get from doing the Right Thing. For starters, it allows you to customize your system up the wazoo. Whatever you want, you can get. Better yet, since lots of hackers use and work on open source software, chances are somebody already implemented something that is closer to your ideal than any proprietary system. With OS X, as with Windows, it's Steve's way or the highway. Sure, they'll allow you to customize some things, but that's chump change compared to the flexibility and power of open source.

Secondly, there are certain things that some Linux distributions simply do better than OS X. I won't go into detail about that here, because I've done so often enough in the past. Just accept that certain things are easier/faster/etc. on Linux Distro X than they are on OS X. If you happen to run into these things often, it is worth considering a switch.

Finally, perhaps the OP is one of those "serious FLOSS zealots" who prefer to run only FLOSS on their sytsems. Is there anything wrong with that?

Re:Purpose.

[Lemmy Caution]

Pre-coffee, I tend to be overly literal, so I guess we're even. :-)

Re:Purpose.

[Ohreally_factor]

It could be that he already bought the hardware and has since decided that he wants to run Linux as his OS exclusively. It could be that he has a laptop, and his HD space and expansion is more limited (and thus he wants to remove the "clutter" of an unused OS, while retaining the ability to run its apps). He could like the aesthetics of the Apple hardware, while not liking the OS X UI. There could be a lot of reasons that don't place him among the freetards.

Re:Purpose.

[Anonymous Coward]

Go read some Apple technical manuals if you think this is true. For a while, commonly replaced parts were classified as user replaceable, but now, it isn't even easy to get into anything except the Mac Pro. Good luck doing anything more than replacing RAM in anything or hard drives in Mac Pros and MacBooks. You would have a hard time finding the parts, getting into the machine, and probably paying for the parts. Replacement logic boards cost a whole bucket full of ass loads.

Re:Purpose.

[Anthony Baby]

Mac OS X is a great operating system. On My PowerPC it has never failed me. On Core 2 Duo I have been noticing behavioral problems that are interrupting my work flow. Often, and seemingly randomly, Finder will lock up. Gradually all my open windows become non-responsive until I have no choice but to hard reboot. When you do that, you risk corrupting your hard drive with invalid sibling links and invalids nodes. Some of these can be fixed using fsck; but often you must reformat the drive. A nice feature of Mac OS X is that I can boot of the installation DVD, load a terminal, and then proceed to backup all my files, but it is a pain.

What the fuck is he trying to gain?

Performance and stability. Better memory management. The lack of a Finder. Basically some of the most common things people who want to run Linux want to gain. However, I use applications like Shake, Final Cut, GarageBand, and Aperture. These don't have practical equivalents in the Windows or Linux world.

Re:Purpose.

[Anthony Baby]

I hear that a lot. Fact is, Apple makes good hardware. Some peple buy Apple hardware not for the operating system but for the hardware. I don't mind paying a premium for a piece of hardware that won't die on me after 2 years like my HPs and my Compaqs have. I'd consider an IBM to be a premium purchase too by the way. The Mac look was the least of my deciding factors when I bought this MacTel. The silent operation of my Macs, x86 and PPC alike, were far more important to me. But yes, I like clean lines and a minimalist approach to design. I have an investment in Mac software already, and I rely on Mac software for work and play, so purchasing a PC makes no sense. Plus, I already own the Mac. It's cheaper to use what you already have, no? I would never have considered doing anything more than running Linux in VMWARE or Parallels on the iMac had I not run into stability problems that remain non-existant on my PowerPC.

As for replacing parts, after building and buying many traditional desktops over the years, I came to the conclusion that aside from adding memory and additional hard drives, I rarely upgrade parts without doing a total upgrade of everything in my rig. If my iMac's screen dies, I can plug it into another monitor and use that. It'll be ugly, but it will work. I've never had hardware failures with Apple computers that required replacing anything except for my MacBook's battery. The only thing I really consider myself shit outta luck on are video card upgrades.

Re:Purpose.

[jesboat]

Maybe an operating system which doesn't crash [1] whenever supposedly hot-pluggable devices go away or it gets angry?

[1] e.g. develop unkillable processes

(If only Apple would make kill -9, umount -f, and macx_swapoff() actually work, and fix critical apps (at first glance: Finder, Dock, WindowServer, SystemUIServer, diskarbitrartiond, the printing system, ...) to either be multithreaded or not block on hardware/network access, I'd be *much* more convinced of OSX's ability to be used long-term as a stable OS.)

Oh, and I'm not bitter in the least. :-)

Re:Purpose.

[james968]

IF you have the source code you can (THEORHETICALLY) install the GNUStep enivronment, then recompile against the GNUStep libraries.

Though I'd voice the opinion of the other posters: WHY??

* If you don't want to spend the money on an emulator, you can also get Qemu (or its mac version) and run that. Then interact with Qemu as your Window, or run X11 and have them run of the guest os (This also let you (optionally) play/learn with networking, shared authentication, having different web browsers for testing etc). (I'd recomend VMware for the Mac instead, just for the ease of networking).

* Another possibility is to boot up to X instead of Cocoa, this would give you the linux look and feel. Though I don't think X would be able to handle graphic calls by Coccoa apps.

* Install Fink or Darwin Ports (or whatever its called now) and just run the Macintosh compiled version of your X11 apps.

* Buy CrossOver Office for Linux and run the WINDOWS version of iTunes. (CrossOver Office is also available for the Mac as well as WINE).
(OR ALL OF THE ABOVE)

Resist the Urge

[DrDitto]

Why would you want to replace OS/X with Linux? Thats like replacing a shiny new Mercedez-Benz with a rebuilt Chevy.

Re:Resist the Urge

[morgan_greywolf]

Why would you want to replace OS/X with Linux? Thats like replacing a shiny new Mercedez-Benz with a rebuilt Chevy.

Mods: Why did you mod him down? He has a point!

That depends. Maybe the poster believes in the ideals of the Free software movement. If you really do believe in Free software, then you just have to say "no" to a non-free operating system. Or, maybe the poster wants to take advantage of the features or lower memory/CPU requirements of a desktop Linux distro. Maybe OS X doesn't meet his needs in other ways.

An operating system is a tool like anything else. Owning a Mac isn't a religion. Not everyone bows to the Great Turtlenecked One. It's up to each person to pick an OS, platform and application suite that meets their needs and fits in with their world view.

Re:Resist the Urge

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do people always use a Mercedes-Benz as the top of line car in analogies. The things suck, they break down all the time and are way too expensive. In fact the last Consumer Reports I read said it was better to buy a 9 year old Lexus than that shiny new Benz. So in that context, maybe it is better to just run one OS and be able to use all your programs, whatever they're written for.

Re:Resist the Urge

[GrumpyOldMan]

I'm in the same situation. For 99% of what I do, MacOSX is a flaky pain in the neck. I'd love to be able to confine MacOSX to a window. Here is my background:

I've run *nix on the desktop for roughly 17 years. Last year, after we had a baby and I had essentially no time, I finally got tired of maintaining my system, and thought the "just works" aspect of MacOSX might be a nice change. I've been running 10.4.x on my Core 2 Duo iMac since last October. I've found that after more than a decade and a half of being able to customize my desktop behavior, I just can't adjust to the MacOSX gui. I hate the menu bar at the top, I hate not being able to define *MY* hotkeys for resize, move, and iconify, I miss the easy X11 1-click cut and 1-click paste, etc. To get around some of this, I run most of my shells via xterm. However, X locks solid every few weeks (usually when I scroll too much or too fast in some window).

I also find that the only MacOSX application I ever use is iTunes. I started out using Mail and Safari, but I moved back to Thunderbird and Firefox for the plugins. Specifically, the external editor plugin for Thunderbird so that I can edit messages in xemacs, and the noscript and adbplockplus extensions for Thunderbird.

I also hate that my 4 USBserial connectors are flaky, and have to be re-plugged before they'll all show up on boot. Neither Linux nor FreeBSD had this problem.

At any rate, how is the codeweavers support for playing iTunes videos? That's really the only thing I use iTunes for is video.

Re:Resist the Urge

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm... Run X11 (found in the Utility folder in the Applications folder). Run it in take over the screen mode. Or replace the window manager with your choice.
Take the linux apps you love. Build them on the mac. Minor fixes may be needed, far less than recreating OS X on Linux. Use any number of the guides to slim down OS X to the bare minimum foot print. Enjoy your Linux-lite experience on your nice iMac and get all the benefits of optimized drivers for the hardware. Set your environment up so that at login it all starts automatically. Enjoy. I recommend Fink for ease of getting apps to your Mac ... They'll have most of what you want. I _know_ this does not answer the original question, but it is a more practical solution given the lack of actual requirements or desires for why Linux when Mac OS X is beloved by the original author...

Re:Resist the Urge

[BladeMelbourne]

I do - and I would if I could get 3D accelerated ATI Radeon 9200 drivers for Linux running on a PPC Mac Mini.

My biggest gripe is Finder. Another gripe is the lack of GUI themes. Another gripe is the creation of hidden dot files on removable storage used on other operating systems. Next, the slowdown of the OS from 10.4 to 10.4.10 (I have reinstalled twice during that time).

I do digg the clarity of the fonts, and zooming in with Ctrl and Scroll wheel. I just dont want it to be my primary OS at home anymore.

Re:Resist the Urge

[Anonymous Coward]

For Mac OS X themes, check out ShapeShifter (http://unsanity.com/haxies/shapeshifter/) or ThemePark

To turn off the creation of hidden files on network stores, type:

defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteNetworkStores true

I dislike that it is on by default but at least it is possible to turn it off. Not sure if there is something similar for removable volumes (tip: google)

Re:Resist the Urge

[thejam]

The "radeon" X driver supports DRI for the 9200 Radeon. For a long time, that was the best 3d card with a working free software 3d driver. I think ATI no longer supports that card for their proprietary driver, which is more evidence of the peril of proprietary software.

Re:Resist the Urge

[G Morgan]

Lexus. They never break down but you'd wish they would.

Mercedes are really screwed up right now though, officially the worse service on the planet.

Re:Resist the Urge

[Anne Thwacks]

Owning a Mac isn't a religion.

You're new here aren't you!

Re:Resist the Urge

[Anonymous Coward]

they break down all the time and are way too expensive

This is why I did not go out and buy a Benz.

Also. lack of fund$. But you get my point.

Re:Resist the Urge

[GrumpyOldMan]

Yes, Run X11. And watch it lock up every 2 or 3 weeks, as I mentioned in my original post. If X11 didn't lockup, I'd be almost happy...

Re:Resist the Urge

[molarmass192]

VMWare Fusion ... download it ... it's really good on OS X. I have 3 Linux images I regularly use with almost no perceptible performance hit. It has a really slick full screen mode. Also, there's nothing stopping you from imaging your machine with Linux and installing OS X in a VMWare VM, it's a bit flaky on the redraws, but you'll have access to iTunes since you DO have a valid OS X license after all. The downside to that is you won't have access to firmware updates from Stevie.

Re:Resist the Urge

[Anonymous Coward]

The open source radeon drivers work fine on my ppc mini running Gentoo. Games like Quake3, Nexuiz and Tomatoes work great!

Re:Resist the Urge

[tiocsti]

So if you believe in free software, you need to run a free os, i'll buy that. Why, though, would you run non-free applications on that free os? That's the part that makes no sense.

If you dont believe in free software (or, rather, dont believe proprietary software is immoral) what is the reason to switch from os x to linux on a desktop. Performance might be one answer, but you are giving up a lot for the extra performance. It's all quite confusing to me.

Re:Resist the Urge

[amigabill]

An operating system is a tool like anything else. Owning a Mac isn't a religion. Not everyone bows to the Great Turtlenecked One. It's up to each person to pick an OS, platform and application suite that meets their needs and fits in with their world view.

Excellent point of view. But this is Slashdot, and the Slashdot masses will flame amyone who chooses the "wrong" alternative OS. Any time AmigaOS comes up, the Slashdot masses flame it outright. Slashdot does not allow me the choice you define there. Why should any other "wrong" alternative be any more acceptable?

Re:Resist the Urge

[ak3ldama]

I use this card and its open source driver on an x86 box, but perhaps this driver doesn't work on PPC? Does anyone have a Mac Mini w/ this card that can chime in? It is possible this integrated card is slightly different than the older retail versions. Last I knew the ati radeon 9000 card worked well also, and it has versions still available with dual output. (Not that this helps the guy with a Mac Mini though :-(

Re:Resist the Urge

[couchslug]

"If you really do believe in Free software, then you just have to say "no" to a non-free operating system."

Funny how the ideals of (some) Free Software folks stop at the software.

"Not everyone bows to the Great Turtlenecked One" except when they buy his hardware, which his software exists to sell.

Re:Resist the Urge

[ickoonite]

It's up to each person to pick an OS, platform and application suite that meets their needs...

Exactly! And if he needs Mac OS X applications, he needs Mac OS X! OS choice and application suite choice are not unrelated. If the submitter were as rational as you, then he wouldn't have bought a bloody Mac in the first place. Given that he is clearly taken in by The Great Turtlenecked One's promises of teh purdy and has drunk at the Fountain of iLife, switching to Linux seems non-sensical.

iqu :|

Re:Resist the Urge

[AshtangiMan]

It only works when comparing to Apple stuff.

As an apple user I should be able to make comments like this without being modded down. But alas jokes about apple being less than perfect are modded down.

Re:Resist the Urge

[Anonymous Coward]

"Why would you want to replace OS/X with Linux? Thats like replacing a shiny new Mercedez-Benz with a rebuilt Chevy."

Depending on your computing needs, it may be more like replacing a Porsche with an M1A2 battle tank.
Both OS's fulfill some common needs, but are not interchangeable.

BTW - I've always thought of Windows as the Honeywagon of the OS world - Most of the time it can do the task required, but not very practical, and both are full of shit.

Re:Resist the Urge

[Anonymous Coward]

A better analogy would be that Linux is a Lexus or a Jaguar and OS X is a Mercedez-Benz that has had its engine replaced with the engine of a 1971 Ford Pinto.

Re:Resist the Urge

[Anonymous Coward]

An operating system is a tool like anything else.
Unless said operating system is OSX, then the user is the tool.

Re:Resist the Urge

[trum4n]

I'll take the Chevy you don't want!
 
  Your right! Linux is a Chevy compared to OSx the Benz. The Chevy is faster. See ya at the drag strip!

Re:Resist the Urge

[wiredlogic]

You could try to use the Xorg X server to see if it is more stable than Apple's.

Re:Resist the Urge

[Slashcrap]

Why would you want to replace OS/X with Linux? Thats like replacing a shiny new Mercedez-Benz with a rebuilt Chevy.

It seems to me that the obvious benefit here would be the ability to run MacOSX apps without being identified with a community largely made up of smug cocksuckers.

I know a number of non-geeks who don't even know what Linux is, yet they will gladly confirm that they have no intention of buying a Mac, because Mac owners tend to be annoyingly smug and gay. Personally I think the whole Mac users = gay thing is extremely offensive and shouldn't be said. The suggestion that homosexuals are more likely than straight people to drink the Apple kool-aid is a terrible slur on an otherwise fine and upstanding group of people.

Also, car analogies suck so badly that daring to post one in 2007 actually makes me embarrassed for you. It's just inviting people to reply and say that the Mercedes would only run on Apple authorised roads and would have a battery that can't be replaced, while the Chevy is free, reliable, costs nothing to upgrade and doesn't come with a non-removable bumper sticker that says "Elitist Twat" in big letters.

Re:Resist the Urge

[Anthony Baby]

You're pretty much on point. I'm very pragmatic about operating systems because I've used so many. I do love Macs though. When people say "Why by a Mac if..." I want to retort with "Why by a Windows PC if...".

I think people who purchase PCs in stores with the intention of running Linux are weird, but I know I look just as wierd to them.

For me, buying a Macintosh isn't about choosing Mac OS X. People who think you are locked in to Mac OS are forgetting about things like PPC Linux and BeOS - my only point being, it's been several years since the Macintosh was locked down to a single operating system. I don't go running around mocking Windows users for being forced to use MS-DOS instead of DR-DOS now do I? *wink*

I do believe in free software and I do prefer Linux over every other system, but I prefer Apple over every other hardware maker. In the end, software is portable; hardware quality is not. If I didn't have specific application needs, I would be happily running Gentoo on my iMac.

Re:Resist the Urge

[Anonymous Coward]

Because, Linux is a better operating system?

Re:Resist the Urge

[Almahtar]

When you get used to the choices you have in *nix, it's really hard to go back. I switched almost entirely to Linux and FreeBSD. I bought a Mac Mini hoping it would prove to be even more friendly than the Beryl + (KDE or Gnome) desktops I used at the time.

OSX's lack of flexibility (wanna show hidden files in the gui file browser? Have fun with that!!) drove me nuts. I ended up dual booting it with Linux... and haven't booted into OSX for almost a year now.

Re:Resist the Urge

[gotodevnull]

better idea: get your girlfriend to get a mac.

Re:Resist the Urge

[Gaber]

The "X11 locks up while scrolling too much/too fast" problem annoys me too. I've found that disabling backing store seems to help; add the "-bs" option to the last line in /etc/X11/xdm/Xservers.

Re:Resist the Urge

[thechao]

Flip side of the coin: my first computer ca. 1985 was a Mac (it's in the closet, but it does run), followed by a whole slow of LC's, LCIII's, PowerMacs, G3's, G4's, and (most recently) MacMini. 23 *years* of Mac fanaticism. This all changed about 3 mos. ago: I develop exclusively in Linuxen (the Parasol group is Danish/Finnish and insists), and have found it fairly easy and straightforward. I wanted to write a video-capture utility to do some simple soft-real-time frame-segmentation. V4L2 was easy and worked out of the box. Win32-whatever (escapes me) was a little more difficult, but the documentation was slightly better than V4L2, so it's a wash. (This included writing a custom C->C# bridge for USB acquisition.) For Mac? Nothing. Literally, I spent >20 hours just trying to find out what the name of the functions were. I have an ADC membership, and Apple pretty much told me to go fuck myself. After that I swore off. I'm typing on my last Mac I will ever own; as soon as I can I'll be buying either a Dellbuntu or a FreeDOSHP.

"darwinux"

[johkra]

I was searching for the same thing (I wanted to test a crash Mac users experienced with an cross-platform app, but I don't own a Mac.), but I found nothing usable.

There's "darwinux" (http://lwn.net/Articles/229088/), but this far away from being usable.

Re:"darwinux"

[TheRaven64]

There was a Mac OS X ABI compatibility layer for NetBSD a few years back, based on their existing Mach and FreeBSD layers. Last time I checked (2005?) it was capable of running the Darwin build of XFree86 with full graphical support, but had a few issues that stopped WindowServer from starting. If you used this, you could run OS X on a different kernel, but I'm not entirely sure what you would gain. You'd probably be better off running the X server full screen on OS X, and just command-tabbing out when you needed to run some OS X native software.

Re:"darwinux"

[tepples]

I wanted to test a crash Mac users experienced with an cross-platform app, but I don't own a Mac. Is this app developed by you? If so, do you have a revenue stream associated with it? If not, with what money do you buy your primary development PC? Or if so, can you use some from that fund to buy a Mac mini?

Re:"darwinux"

[johkra]

I'm "code janitor" for an Open Source project. (aMule) There are user donations, but these are solely used to cover the server/domain expenses, not for developer hardware.

I'm using my own money to buy hardware and as I prefer travelling over state-of-the-art hardware (my most recent system is from 2005) I'm unlikely to spend more than 600 Euro for a system with lower specs than my current system for the sole reason of application testing. ;)

You Answered Your Own Question

[organgtool]

Mac OS X apps aren't just Mac OS X apps. They are Carbon. They are Cocoa. They are universal binaries. They are PPC code with Altivec. Does such a project exist yet? If not, why not?

I think you answered your own question. Mac apps are very complex due to all of the mechanisms they use to maintain backward compatibility. Reimplementing all of those libraries is a huge task. Wine exists as a reimplementation of Win32 and DirectX strictly out of necessity, but there is little need to run Mac apps in Linux. Most people who want to run Mac apps prefer to run them on Apple hardware. Seeing that you already own an iMac, I think the bigger question is why are you so insistent on running Linux on your Mac?

Re:You Answered Your Own Question

[thejam]

I think the even bigger question is why run Mac apps at all. Sure, there are some proprietary apps that are really convenient, but if you take a real hard look at functionality, some kind of free software workflow usually suffices, and over my 14 years with GNU/Linux, the sacrifices have diminished into pettiness. If you must, run Windows apps under wine, or install a bare-bones XP under vmware but use it rarely. You can even install OS X under vmware, apparently.

Re:You Answered Your Own Question

[neersign]

Seeing that you already own an iMac, I think the bigger question is why are you so insistent on running Linux on your Mac?

funny, i asked myself the same thing. Last summer I was a few months in to my Linux transition on my desktop and I decided I wanted to find a cheap laptop to sit on my couch with and browse the internet as I watched tv. I thought I was going to run Linux on the laptop too, and I ended up with an old PPC powerbook that had OSX on it. I already knew that OSX was built upon BSD and the guy I bought it from told me how I'd feel right at home in OS X, because of it's lineage. I had already done research on ppc linux, but I decided to give OS X a try since I had only used it on kiosk demo machines before. Turns out it is pretty decent, and once I got past it's "quirks" I decided to keep it.

so eventually, I said "what need to I have to change this over to linux" and my answer was "none." I knew I could run X apps with some fudging, but i don't even have a need to do that. I've got ichat, firefox (camino if i feel like it), ssh, Fugu, and Colloquy to suit my needs. Anything else and the 867mhz ppc just seems way too slow (especially compared to my xeon 3050 running at 3.4ghz).

Re:You Answered Your Own Question

[hackstraw]

Seeing that you already own an iMac, I think the bigger question is why are you so insistent on running Linux on your Mac?

I was wondering the same thing. I love linux, but I see no advantage of running it on my iMac. Linux runs great headless on cheap hardware, and OS X has X11, NFS, a great terminal application _AND_ it runs OS X apps. I leave my iMac on 24/7, and its power management spins down the harddisk and turns off the monitor. All of the software to hardware stuff like my bluetooth keyboard and mouse, the eject button on the keyboard, my external firewire harddrive and other 3rd party hardware "just works". It takes about 20 seconds or so for it to wake up, and when I'm done I just walk away and it just goes to sleep.

Even though Linux is "free" it would probably cost me $5-15/month in electricity to run it on my Mac, and it would at the same time put more wear and tear on my hardware.

I've not been a fan of emulation or dual booting or any of that jazz for years. Lower end hardware is cheap enough and powerful enough to justify just buying another box instead of overloading one box. So, I really don't understand the problem here, or how running OS X apps on Apple hardware using the Linux OS is a solution to anything. OS X runs great on iMacs. Linux runs great on plenty of inexpensive hardware that is accessable from the Mac running OS X with no problem, or at least much less of a problem than running OS X apps on top of Linux on Apple hardware.

OH, and I forgot that you can buy parallels for OS X, and run Linux/Windows/FreeBSD or whatever you want without a second box. So, remind me again what running Linux as the primary OS on an iMac gives somebody ?

Re:You Answered Your Own Question

[LWATCDR]

That was going to by my question.
Why?
Most FOSS Linux applications are available for OS/X, just install fink and maybe the Xwindows server. If you really want to run Linux then you have Parallels as an option to run a Linux instance on Mac OS/X.
OS/X looks like a great OS that offers a really nice GUI with a nice stable Unix foundation. Unless OS/X compatibility becomes a real issue for Linux users I doubt that you will see the effort needed to make an OS/X Wine-like system. It is an itch that not enough people feel the need to scratch.
Of course the true FOSS answer is simply this... Start coding.

Re:You Answered Your Own Question

[Anonymous Coward]

Seeing that you already own an iMac, I think the bigger question is why are you so insistent on running Linux on your Mac?

Why is that a big question? (other than the fact that the submitter called Mac OS X his "beloved") I just bought a Mac Pro to give OS X and honest chance as my main machine, but I just want to switch back to Linux. Many of us bought Apple hardware to give OS X a chance, knowing that we can switch to our OS of choice (Linux, Windows, BSD) if we didn't like it. I would rather have Linux as my main OS, because I think that its better, but still have access to OS X for a few apps I like (e.g. Garageband). The compromise for now is to run Linux in a VM, but that just doesn't feel right.

Re:You Answered Your Own Question

[Blakey Rat]

More to the point, why don't you run Linux in the virtual machine and keep OS X as the host? Doesn't that make much more sense?

Re:You Answered Your Own Question

[lordtoran]

There exists one type of Mac app some people would be very happy to run on Linux: Blockbuster game titles that have been ported to the Mac but not Linux. 99% of show stoppers in Wine/Cedega gaming seem to be DirectX related, so why not pick a version of a game that has already been ported to another OpenGL based platform?

Re:You Answered Your Own Question

[hummassa]

Even though Linux is "free" it would probably cost me $5-15/month in electricity to run it on my Mac, and it would at the same time put more wear and tear on my hardware. Funny, my laptop runs cooler under linux than under WindowsXP. It suspends automagically if I close the lid, and takes like five seconds to restore when I open the lid and press any key. I smell some FUD here.

Re:You Answered Your Own Question

[fishbowl]

Fully working power management was the primary reason I switched from Linux to OSX for laptop use.

I have tried *many* notebooks, and have never seen fully functional power management.

Re:You Answered Your Own Question

[WhiteWolf666]

I'm a huge Linux proponent, but:

Final Cut Studio >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> OSS or non-free Linux video editing apps, at least in the under $10,000 range.
Adobe Creative Suite >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> OSS or non-free Linux desktop image apps, at least when you have to deal with manufacturers that require stuff to be submitted in AI format.

Those are the two big ones for me, anyways.

Re:You Answered Your Own Question

[Anonymous Coward]

" Mac apps are very complex due to all of the mechanisms they use to maintain backward compatibility. "

Please don't talk about things of which you are ignorant.

The Carbon API is far from a compatibility layer. It is a useful API in its own right; Apple does not maintain much backward compatibility.

There is very little over-complication in Mac OS X.

congtratulations!

[Anonymous Coward]

You have finally figured out that asses are for shitting out of.

Why?

[jessecurry]

I just want to know why you would want to replace OS X with Linux? I understand the FOSS ideals, but you could always run linux in a virtual machine. I've installed Linux on quite a few of my Macs over the years, but since OS X I find that almost all of the linux functionality is sitting right in OS X.
What do you hope to gain by installing Linux as the full-time OS? Please don't flame me, I'd like some logical points, or even a "just because".

Funny you should mention this...

[SpinyNorman]

I'm looking for a way to convert my Lamborghini Diablo into a lawnmower.

Re:Funny you should mention this...

[tgd]

Thats easy. I'll trade you my lawnmower for it.

Re:Funny you should mention this...

[Corporate Troll]

That's going to be one hell of a lawnmover! ;-)

Re:Funny you should mention this...

[tgatliff]

Well today is your lucky day!!... My special lawnmower, which I call Asta La Vista, and it has allot of "special" features which kind of stops someone from stealing it... Admittably these features makes it super slow moving, and most of the time prevent you from actually mowing the lawn. Also, it has an engine the size of your Diablo just to idle, but it definitely is a lawnmower and it definitely does sometime actually cut grass sometimes. Another great feature is that it has a really great paint job that sorta looks transparent, and it even has some of the latest and greatest paper mache cutting blades... And the best part is that if you actually do try to mow the lawn, it will send back to the manufacture all of your personal information... This is one heck of a deal you would not want to pass up on!! Buy now becausse supplies are limited!!

Let me know if you are interested!! :-)

Re:Funny you should mention this...

[DaveCar]

Well, Lamborghini did start out making tractors ....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamborghini

Re:Funny you should mention this...

[the1rob]

Blade of grass about to be cut.

Cancel or Allow?

Re:Funny you should mention this...

[lazyforker]

Aren't Lamborghinis made by a tractor company? No conversion necessary.

Re:Funny you should mention this...

[tgatliff]

That is just too funny.. I wish I had some moderation points.... :-)

Re:Funny you should mention this...

[milatchi]

And still have better clutches than Ferraris.

You can't

[suv4x4]

There's no much motivation right now for "Mac Wine" since there isn't such a flood of Mac-only apps that are essential to Linux users.

You're trying to do something stupid here: a Mac is only good as Apple sold it to you. They've went to thoroughly extensive work to ensure it is so, trying to get something production ready with OSX apps under Linux is begging for problems.

You bought a Mac, use OSX (you can dual boot still, or virtualize).

Re:You can't

[Anonymous Coward]

A couple of years ago I would have agreed with you. But Apple is making some really high quality apps that I would love to buy without having to purchase a mac (I own one anyway, but that's not the point). Now that the Mac platform is x86-based the argument for a compatibility layer (using whatever technical means) has more impact.

Re:You can't

[glenstar]

But... imagine the name of that project: MINE. Or to you Farkers out there: Can't Have. Not Yours.

Re:You can't

[Atzanteol]

You're trying to do something stupid here: a Mac is only good as Apple sold it to you. They've went to thoroughly extensive work to ensure it is so, trying to get something production ready with OSX apps under Linux is begging for problems.

Mmm, yes. Thar be dragons young one. Go back to your pre-packaged world and don't you worry your pretty little head about this "Linux" thing. Let the soothing tone of Steve Jobs' voice sing you to sleep.

Re:You can't

[Frumious Wombat]

>>Mmm, yes. Thar be dragons young one. Go back to your pre-packaged world and don't you worry your pretty little head about >>this "Linux" thing. Let the soothing tone of Steve Jobs' voice sing you to sleep

Pfft. There are the three options for anything valuable from Linux: Fink, DarwinPorts, pull up a shell and run ./configure;make;sudo make install yourself. You still get the clean OS-X interface, the access to polished software that actually works, and the rest of the Mac experience, plus you can run your XLib/GTK/QT apps alongside the rest.

This is why Macs are spreading in scientific computing; as put by a researcher at FermiLab, they're Unix boxes that run iTunes. Not everyone has the time or inclination to futz around with software that's 85% of the way there, and has been for years.

Re:You can't

[Creepy]

actually, it'd still be WINE if they kept the name (acronym is WINE Is Not an Emulator).

Why?

[ZipprHead]

Isn't OSX based off of BSD? Won't most Linux apps run with a little with tweaking to them?

OSX is the reason I stopped using windows with a linux server in the other room.

Why not?

[grammar fascist]

Does such a project exist yet? If not, why not?

• There's not much demand for it.
  
• Most commercial Mac software exists in Windows, so you can run the Windows versions under WINE in Linux.
  
• Most people who buy a Mac are even less inclined to tinker than a typical Windows user, and therefore much less likely to switch to Linux.
  
• Every Apple computer extends the Steve Jobs reality distortion field to the computer user, ensuring lifelong devotion to the product. I haven't a clue why it doesn't affect you this way.
  

It's a fair bet the real answer is one or all of those.

Re:Why not?

[JamesRose]

To your forth point, read the first sentence again: "I have the urge to commit my 24" Core 2 Duo iMac to a single Linux operating system, thus giving up the goodness of my beloved Mac OS X. "

Re:Why not?

[morgan_greywolf]

Every Apple computer extends the Steve Jobs reality distortion field [folklore.org] to the computer user, ensuring lifelong devotion to the product. I haven't a clue why it doesn't affect you this way.

Maybe we should study him in a lab! I think this 'reality distortion field' is the result of some sort of weird mind-control virus! Good thing I don't have it.

All hail the Great Turtlenecked One! The iPhone is awesome! The iPod is great! Mac OS X just works!

Re:Why not?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Most people who buy a Mac are even less inclined to tinker than a typical Windows user, and therefore much less likely to switch to Linux." Boy, do I hate this comment. It always comes up.
A typical user will tend not to tinker whatever the OS. Someone that likes to tinker will prob be better placed under OSX than Windows, what with the simple ability to bring up a terminal window and get a shell. Install xcode from the cd provided and you can get started compiling all those unix based programs (though most of the common ones are already there).

Re:Why not?

[domatic]

Some users such as myself project Reality Assertion Fields. I have and enjoy using a MacBook Pro but this is a work machine and I don't find OS X so compelling to switch all my personal desktops from my fast, reliable, and inexpensive Linux installs (which I find more than adequately useful BTW). I could catalog complaints about Linux, Windows, aaaand OS X but that would get three sets of fanboys after me. Anyhoo, I find Parallels sufficient for my cross platform needs with the MacBook in question. Still, if I could run Linux as the primary OS on the MacBook and virtualize OS X then I would do it. I used to run my PowerPC notebook that way with Mac-On-Linux and it worked quite well.

Re:Why not?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is such a thing for PPC Macs. It's called Mac-On-Linux.

http://mac-on-linux.sourceforge.net/

Re:Why not?

[Bert64]

You can virtualize OSX...
You might need to download a "dodgy" version to do it, but as far as the legal implications go, you *do* have a legal copy and you *are* running it on apple hardware, the license agreement doesn't state that you must run it on the bare hardware and not under a virtualization environment.

Re:Why not?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm.. gotta take issue with your option 3.
Most people who buy a Mac are even less inclined to tinker than a typical Windows user, and therefore much less likely to switch to Linux.

I'm the opposite. Switched from over 5 years of running linux (Mandrake, Redhat, Gentoo, Ubuntu) over to a Mac. I've tinkered quite a bit on it to modify a few things I did not like, but the important part is that I often found documentation or other people wanting to do the same changes, and posted what they had to do - usually just using hidden preferences (kinda akin to about:config in firefox).
I'd say Mac users are just as likely to want to tinker with there computer, but the ratio of Mac vs. Windows users offsets this perception (i.e. many many many windows users stick to the minimum version of any given windows edition, use IE, and never change the default background)

Re:Why not?

[domatic]

I've been under the impression that point release Software Updates can break such installs so I'm leery of doing that. Since OS X uses the TCPA chip on real hardware to authenticate I suppose it might be possible to simply employ it with a virtualizer to start the normal OS X. Then again, one of the points of TCPA is to be resistant to that sort of thing. It doesn't enamor me of it.

Re:Why not?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Most people who buy a Mac are even less inclined to tinker than a typical Windows user, and therefore much less likely to switch to Linux."

I don't think this is true at all. The TYPICAL Mac user is significantly further up the food chain than the TYPICAL Windows user.

Re:Why not?

[Anonymous Coward]

OS X is great for people who like to tinker. You get to start with something that works, and then break it if you wish, instead of starting out with stuff that usually so broken to start with that a beginner has little chance of fixing it. I am thinking mostly of device drivers, power management, and getting complete build environment up and working.

Re:Why not?

[myowntrueself]

I've been under the impression that point release Software Updates can break such installs

You are absolutely right.

The 'hackintosh' installs use hacked versions of some kernel stuff. This gets replaced by some of the Apple updates and breaks the system. The forums are full of instructions on what to do to upgrade hackintoshes.

Huh?

[Cereal Box]

I will never understand why someone would buy a $2000 iMac and negate the entire reason for purchasing from Apple -- to run Mac OS X. You can run Linux for a lot less money, you know.

Honestly though, Mac OS X really isn't that bad -- in fact, I think it's pretty nice, especially if you come from a Linux background. You do realize that you can run pretty much any Linux app (as long as it doesn't do any funky OS-specific things) natively on Mac OS X, right? You could even run a full-fledged Linux installation via Parallels if you so desire. ... Or is the main issue that you're one of those people who gets the "heebie-jeebies" at the thought of running software that isn't open source? In that case, my advice is to get a life -- it's just software! The world won't end if you run a piece of non-free code!

Re:Huh?

[byolinux]

Interesting the way you attempt to dismiss people who value software freedom, there. Has it occured to you that those that do, aren't doing it because of the 'heebie-jeebies', but of a greater sense of community, liberty and rights?

You might be fine with proprietary software, but please don't dismiss people who aren't.

Re:Huh?

[Dystopian Rebel]

I will never understand why someone would buy a $2000 iMac and negate the entire reason for purchasing from Apple -- to run Mac OS X. The word "never" is a reliable marker for silly thinking.

OS X is not the sole reason for buying Apple hardware. Some Apple hardware is very nice. The Mac Mini is a great little computer, period; I run Linux and Windows on mine. I have never owned an iMac, but I assume that the Intel generation hardware offers no obstacles (except Apple Bluetooth for non-XP Windows).

Although I like OS X and think it's better than Windows, it isn't perfect. The Finder in OS X leaves .DS_STORE droppings everywhere. Network browsing is annoying. I use the OS X Finder enough that these two problems make Ubuntu my desktop OS of choice.

Re:Huh?

[Cereal Box]

Seriously man, it's just software. It's not a way of life.

And if he was so concerned about "community, liberty, and rights", why did he buy a $2000 proprietary machine just to run open source on it?

Re:Huh?

[BladeMelbourne]

Those of us with PPC processors can't do that. Many Linux apps are several versions older in Fink than on Linux.
Maybe KDE 4 will be different.

Mac OS X is too simple for me. I had more control over Windows 3.1...

Re:Huh?

[mashade]

Because it's pretty impossible to build a truly open machine these days. What difference does it make if it's a proprietary generic PC, or proprietary Apple iMac?

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Idiot -- where can you "buy" non-proprietary machines.

Just because YOU like the hand-holding of OSX, doesn't mean
that everyone else has to. I run Linux on Mac hardware -- an
old Blue & White G3 makes a nice fileserver, wanna try getting
your yuppie OS on that?

Re:Huh?

[BladeMelbourne]

I meant the GUI and its configuration options is more simple than Windows 3.1...
Note to self - I must use the preview button ;-)

Re:Huh?

[Cereal Box]

You know what's meant by the "proprietary" remark. An Apple machine is a far more "closed platform" than a plain PC built from parts. It's even got the dreaded TPM chip!

And if nothing else, it's a far more expensive way of accomplishing the same goal -- running Linux.

Re:Huh?

[DaveCar]

Personally I wouldn't buy an Apple desktop, because I would built my own PC.

Buying a laptop would be a different matter however. If you buy a laptop you are pretty much buying an operating system too. I would much rather buy a UNIX based OS which, if some bit of hardware doesn't quite work right under Linux, which is ofter quite likely with a laptop, I can get to work on the supported OS and not have to run Windows to do it.

I would really like to be able to get some (self-compiled) OS X command line applications (like afconvert) to work under Linux or Darwin (which I could run under a virtual machine) by copying the CoreAudio, etc., frameworks across.

If anyone has managed to do this I would be extremely interested to hear about it :) I had tried under Darwin, but not managed it.

Re:Huh?

[Bert64]

Because it's not a proprietary machine...
It's a proprietary implementation of the open and documented x86 compatible specification. And it's no more proprietary than a Dell, HP or any other pre-assembled system.
I have a Macbook, it's fully capable of running Linux and all of the hardware works, the SATA is an Intel chipset, as is the video.. the wireless is Atheros, the sound is Intel too. Everything works with linux, in contrast to some other laptops which often use strange proprietary wireless chipsets. Higher end macs use nvidia or ati video, which can be more of a problem especially in the case of ati, but their drivers are aparrently going to be improving soon...

Re:Huh?

[byolinux]

I don't believe it does have a TPM chip, actually.

I think initial developer machines that were loaned from Apple and basically Pentium 4s, did, but not the consumer machines.

Also, Apple machines have nice form factor, and the Mac Mini is quite a small, neat box. And it has Intel video.

All reasons to run a free operating system on them.

Re:Huh?

[k_187]

yes, but then why spend the extra on a mac? There's nothing you can do in linux on apple hardware that you can't do on somebody else's, for cheaper.

Re:Huh?

[mashade]

Is it really? About the only part I can't buy on my own is the case. If you do a lspci on any macbook or imac, you see very familiar chipsets.

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

...why did he buy a $2000 proprietary machine just to run open source on it?

Who said he did?

Oh that's right. YOU did.

Why don't you go back to standing outside 1 Infinite Loop with your carefully lettered sign reading "I love you Steve Jobs!!!"?

And unless you were supplying the money for his computer, it ain't any business of of yours what he buys, so you are an asshole as well as stupid.

Re:Huh?

[Anthony Baby]

I will never understand why someone would buy a $2000 iMac and negate the entire reason for purchasing from Apple -- to run Mac OS X. You can run Linux for a lot less money, you know.

Why would you buy a $2000 PC and negate the entire reason for purchasing from [insert PC maker] -- to run Windows?

It's a matter of running the operating system I choose on the hardware I prefer. Would you ask this question of people who run Linux on iPaqs and Jornadas, or on PS3 or Xbox? The fact is, Mac OS is just one of a few operating systems in current development that runs on the Macintosh computer.

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

He's obviously not interested in freedom if he wants to run proprietary OS X apps on Linux.

Use VMWare or similar

[Wooky_linuxer]

is your best bet right now. I am not sure if OS X can be properly virtualized, since it seems to check whether you are running it on Apple hardware - of course, if you are going to use an iMac, then you are indeed using Apple hardware, but it doesn't seem so to the OS. You'd need to use a hacked version I guess - oh the irony!

If you asked me, I would advise the contrary: run Linux in a virtual environment under OS X. Less trouble to get it running, no need to use hacked versions, and there is a good possibility that features such as Coherence from Parallels or the equivalent in VMWare Fusion might be available for Linux guests someday.

Re:Use VMWare or similar

[Bert64]

Why would you need coherence for Linux?
You can use the native OSX X server, and run the apps "remotely" from the virtual instance of Linux.
You can do the same with Solaris etc too...
Similarly if your running a Linux host, and a unix-like guest OS, you can do exactly the same thing with your native X server as the display for your virtualized apps.
Coherence is merely an attempt to provide windows users with functionality that already existed on unix.

Re:Use VMWare or similar

[TheRaven64]

As the other poster mentioned, you don't need coherence, since X11 is already network transparent (including OpenGL), and when the 'network' is a RAM buffer between the VM and the host OS this is very fast. Run xhost +{VM address}, log into the VM, do 'export DISPLAY={host address}:0' and run X11 apps as normal. Since you don't need coherence, you can install something cheaper than Parallels or VMWare, such as VirtualBox, which is free (and mostly GPL'd).

If you're going to do this, then grab the version of X11.app that's based on x.org 7.2; it's a lot better than the old one Apple supply.

Re:Use VMWare or similar

[Wooky_linuxer]

I was going to reply that X11 feels sluggish under OS X, then I realized I only used Apple's. Gotta try it someday. Anyways, can I run 3D-accelerated software - think Beryl/Compiz - using X11 this way, with good results? I remembered I once got Quake3 running from an Athlon with the display in a K6, one of them was running Mandrake and the other some Debian flavoured distro, but it was slow and required Nvidia drivers. This was ages ago, mind you.

Re:Use VMWare or similar

[TheRaven64]

3D isn't a problem, since Apple's X11 has always supported GLX. Something like Compiz, however, also relies on the Composite extension, which is not yet supported on OS X.

Why not Linux apps in OSX?

[malevolentjelly]

Let's see- you take your unix kernel, build a fully rewritten, GL-optimized X Windows system... solidify your GNUStep libraries until they're fully compatible with cocoa-

Then be certain you're only running systems with SSE3 or above, since all the intel binaries are optimized for that.

Whoops- also gotta build a compatible CoreAudio system.

Oh no, looks like you're now Apple.

If you're using Mac OS X, you're already using a NeXT compatibility layer on top of a streamlined X and a really high end specialized desktop unix. The question is- why are you trying to run linux? You're using a much higher end unix system that supports X11 and has a full BSD layer, with package managers available. Why don't you just run linux apps in OS X?

Making an OS X "compatibility layer" would essentially just require you to create a shoddy set of OS X libraries- something Apple's already done better.

Take advantage of your resources.

Let me repeat this - OS X is a "mac compatibility layer" running on top of a unix kernel already- it's a totally insane waste of time to re-implement it. If you're that interested in making OS X, you should work for Apple.

Re:Why not Linux apps in OSX?

[someone1234]

Running Apple stuff on cheap hardware might be interesting to some. Apple wouldn't like it, however.

Re:Why not Linux apps in OSX?

[Anonymous Coward]

unning Apple stuff on cheap hardware might be interesting to some. Apple wouldn't like it, however.

but people do it anyway..... what, don't tell me you haven't seen the
intel binaries on bittorrent !! some guy on our server team has OS X on a Dell.....

Re:Why not Linux apps in OSX?

[robbieduncan]

OSX does not use an X Windows system, not matter how streamlined or GL-optimised. The entire window system is different all the way down. Sure there is an optional install X11 that runs on top of Quartz but all native OSX apps are non-X.

Re:Why not Linux apps in OSX?

[Anonymous Coward]

1. It is called "X Window System".

2. The window system is based on DPS, for which a Linux implementation already exists.

Re:Why not Linux apps in OSX?

[Craig Ringer]

I'm not fond of the idea myself, as I suspect it'd never work well. Apple's OS is also a fast moving target and maintaining compatibility would be a nightmare.

I don't buy the "why not run Linux apps on Mac OS X" line though. Apple's X11 is a second citizen that is very poorly integrated into the UI, slow, and clumsy to use. They don't have to be, but Apple hasn't been too enthusiastic about improving X11 support. X11 apps are much easier to use on a native X11 desktop (obviously) and if they're most of what you need and use, moving to such a desktop might be a better option.

As a UNIX user, I'm also always really annoyed by Apple's outdated and incorrect documentation. Check out `man fstab' for example. I reported a bug about that being wrong and out of date (since it's function is now in netinfo, now OpenDirectory) more than two years ago. They just don't bother fixing the man pages when they rip some BSD-like behaviour out and replace it with Apple-specific features, so you never even know where to start looking. How do I automount an afp volume? Certainly not in fstab, but the documentation won't tell you that. Eventually you find out the netinfo format (totally different for afp than any other FS, with no documented reason why you have to use the url form) and use it. A while later, you figure out that the mount points are magic and you have to use /Network to get the machine to do the sane thing. ARGH!

So ... I agree that there's little appeal to trying to kludge Apple apps on to Linux. I just don't think that makes using Mac OS X the logical choice - and I don't agree that it's a better unix than UNIX, as some like to claim. A new OS that uses a changed and somewhat mangled version of BSD for some of its functionality and provides a POSIX layer as one of its 5 major userspace realms, yes, but not a UNIX.

If I was in the situation of needing just a few Mac OS X apps, I'd probably want to use something like VMWare for that. Pity Apple won't let me buy a license to their OS separately to their hardware or run one that came with hardware I own under a virtual environment :S

As it is, I can only advise the poster to endure Apple's X11 implementation, or if that proves non-viable try using Linux in VMWare or Parallels.

Re:Why not Linux apps in OSX?

[Bert64]

Because currently you can only buy that Mac compatibility layer from one place.
If Apple goes bankrupt, or drops it, then your left out in the cold.
Similarly if Apple don't move it in the directions you want, then your stuck. (think very cheap lowend hardware, or very tiny laptops)

I run Kismac, it's a very nice wireless sniffer similar to Kismet on Linux, but graphical and with good gps integration including downloadable maps. I would like to run this on a tablet or a PDA, but Apple don't make such devices, so i have to run Kismet instead (text based) and then import the data into a mapping program later.

Re:Why not Linux apps in OSX?

[malevolentjelly]

I agree, to an extent.

Apple clearly uses their BSD subsystem as a license-free compatibility layer- it's clear to me that proper POSIX compliance was not the most important factor in the system design. Then again, Linux isn't really POSIX compliant either- but that's another tale for another time.

I call Mac OS X a 'specialized' desktop unix. Not a better unix, per se- but unix is an abstract thing. For the purposes of running a desktop workstation, it's hard to beat the performance and capability you get out of OS X. The interface goes a really long way in making it a practical system.

X11 in OS X is simply a compatibility layer- it just connects the X calls to Aqua's draw functions. I consider it to be a bit of a temporary solution until all relevant open source projects write an aqua interface. I'm sure Apple feels similarly.

Re:Why not Linux apps in OSX?

[malevolentjelly]

You're certainly right. I believe building a unique and proprietary window system on Mac was a design decision against using X. Like Unix, X is another abstract thing. I mean, X.org is sort of a kludge in and of itself- it's almost a unique window system also running an X compatibility layer. Supporting X11 in its true form is simply not important, since it's merely a protocol. X.org is more or less a collection of drivers.

One of OS X's strengths is that they dropped the X legacy/weight from a sort of traditional unix system.

I'm not sure whether Aqua is more DPS or X11. Perhaps an Apple employee can pop in and give us a quick clarification. :p

Re:Why not Linux apps in OSX?

[dennism]

2. The window system is based on DPS, for which a Linux implementation already exists.

Actually, Quartz is not based on Display PostScript -- Quartz would be more akin to Display PDF, but even that would be a gross over-simplification. And while slapping a Quartz emulation layer on top of X might "work", it certainly wouldn't be a "good" solution.

Re:Why not Linux apps in OSX?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, they should update the documentation for fstab. You ever notice there isn't an /etc/fstab though? So after reading the manpage, what might you do...look at the file that does exist.

peter$ cat /etc/fstab.hd
IGNORE THIS FILE.
This file does nothing, contains no useful data, and might go away in
future releases. Do not depend on this file or its contents.

But seriously, are you trying to make the argument that Linux documentation is up to date and complete?

Re:Why not Linux apps in OSX?

[Craig Ringer]

Linux docs? Of course not. They vary from good to awful, like Mac OS X's.

As for fstab, your're quite right that it's gone from recent 10.4.x releases. Which is nice, though it'd be nicer if the poor confused sysadmin got the slightest hint where to go instead.

What bugs me is that people talk about Mac OS X like it's some grand uber-UNIX with none of the faults and all the benefits. In reality it's the same inconsistently documented, buggy, poorly maintained piece of crap that we're used to from every other UNIX-like OS. Of course, it throws in some fun new incompatibilities, UI pain (X11 on Mac OS X = bad), and challenges with dealing with the rest of the OS, and reminds you every 10 seconds that if you're not writing in Apple's preferred Objective C/Cocoa then you really don't matter as much. On the other hand, it has some distinctly nice aspects too, especially if you're not at all concerned with portability.

Anyway, you're an AC so why am I bothering.

Re:Why not Linux apps in OSX?

[soft_guy]

Probably easier to figure out how to boot MacOS X on non-Apple hardware than to try to reverse engineer Quartz, Core Audio, etc.

Re:Why not Linux apps in OSX?

[Guy Harris]

Apple clearly uses their BSD subsystem as a license-free compatibility layer- it's clear to me that proper POSIX compliance was not the most important factor in the system design. Then again, Linux isn't really POSIX compliant either- but that's another tale for another time.

As opposed to OS X, where not just POSIX compliance, but Single UNIX Standard v3 compliance is a tale for this October.

And note that said "license-free compatibility layer" is the layer at which, for example, file I/O and network I/O are implemented (except for the driver layer, which is done with I/O Kit, if you consider I/O Kit separate from "BSD" - it's in a separate subtree of the XNU source, along with the Mach code). It's not as if Carbon and Cocoa and Core Foundation are using their own separate calls to do file and network operations.

Re:Why not Linux apps in OSX?

[Zashi]

You know there are two parts to kismet? The kismet server and the kismet UI. The default UI is ncurses based, but you can get qt, gtk, and even web based interfaces.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

I just want to know why you would want to replace OS X with Linux? I understand the FOSS ideals, but you could always run linux in a virtual machine.

Evidently, you don't really understand the FOSS ideals. The FOSS ideal is not "I want to run some neat free software on top of my proprietary OS" ... it is "I want to replace as much of my proprietary software with free software equivalents." In which case, replacing the OS with a free equivalent is a big step in that direction.

Of course, that's assuming this guy is switching to Linux-only on ideological grounds--but if he were, presumably he would be motivated to give up on his previous closed-source OSX-only apps, and switch to using free software equivalents. So, in fact, his motivations may be more pragmatic. Though OS X has lots of UNIX-goodness, there are some things that are just easier to get done in Linux. (Some examples of things that I find easier in Linux than OS X are programming, designing websites, and running websites (both in terms of deploying sites and as a server).)

Why

[jb.hl.com]

If OSX is so "beloved" to you, why on earth would you want to commit to using Linux instead? Honestly, at least on beige box PCs you have the excuse that your choices are limited to Windows and Linux, but you have a tightly integrated, beautiful looking and perfectly working operating system which you want to chuck for...some reason. What can't you do on OSX than you can on Linux? If you want to tinker, why not grab Bochs, QEMU or even better Parallels Desktop and run Linux in that?

I understand the appeal of tinkering, that's fine, but this just seems silly. I've flirted with Linux a few times on my old PC, but anyone who came anywhere near my 20" iMac with it would get a swift left hook ;)

Re:Why

[jessecurry]

I'd probably catch 'em with an overhand right... just to embarrass them a little more

Re:Why

[Anonymous Coward]

Mac are nice hardware, but OSX is far from being perfect.

It is slooow (linux runs cycles around it on the same hardware), difficult to work with (the OSX windows manager cannot resize windows on the left side) and its file manager is a joke, especially when it comes to network browsing.

Re:Why

[Anonymous Coward]

What can't you do on OSX than you can on Linux?

Incremental backups

http://blog.plasticsfuture.org/2006/04/23/mac-back up-software-harmful/

Yes, I know about Time Machine, but it's not out yet, and may not be able to do remote backups and may have other limitations.

Re:Why

[delire]

OS/X is a great middle-ground solution for those that actually need - or think they need - proprietary software and wish to run a slick UNIX-like OS on dedicated hardware.

Increasingly however, there are those that consciously or unconsciously use free-software for most purposes, are not particularly attached to the Apple look-and-feel and don't want to pay for system upgrades. This may be aided as an OS/X user finds that many 'Linux applications' are enough for them and so realises that there's little reason to run the Apple OS itself on their (possibly aged) Apple hardware.

I've seen this happen with a couple of OS/X users (and many times with Windows users). This is widely part of the to-Linux migration strategy: porting native Linux applications to other proprietary platforms makes it easier for those people using those applications to switch.

Moreso, the blanket statement that you "can run any Linux app on OS/X" needs to be taken with a chunky grain of salt. Often getting 'Linux software' running on OS/X involves compiling, spending a lot of time in the terminal, mucking about with linkage and sorting out dependencies. On Linux this stuff is just a click away. Fink and MacPorts have a very small porportion of the software a Debian derived distribution has and probably always will. Moreso, both Fink and MacPorts are still quite plagued with dependency woes akin to those Linux users used to experience many years ago.

In short, for some there just aren't many compelling reason to switch to OS/X from Linux these days. There are however a few things about Linux that make it quite compelling for those run free-software on Mac hardware: They can

Upgrade all the software on your system at once.

Upgrade any package on the system without needing to visit websites to search for updates.

Upgrade the system without cost to enjoy the latest features and security updates

Run Linux on a wide array of computers - the OS can follow the user.

Heavily customise or simply adapt the look-and-feel to suit their tastes (they do it to their homes and our hair, why not the desktop?)

Enjoy better performance with Linux on Mac hardware (at some tasks).

Enjoy some vibrant, rapidy growing user communities (Ubuntu (for instance) has a lot of buzz and enjoys very rapid growth)

Enjoy some of the best bling on the desktop today ;-)

Contrary to bad press from the early days of this young OS called GNU/Linux, much of these things make it a really convenient and fun platform to run..

Different executable formats

[dysprosia]

I don't know how difficult it would be to dynamically (or otherwise) translate Mach-O binaries to ELF. The two systems are using different kernels and different kernel architectures, so even at that most basic level, this would be a problem.

Re:Different executable formats

[Anonymous Coward]

Executable formats barely matter at all in this context. They are just serialization containers for putting stuff on disk. Mac OS 9 supported directly running PEF and XCOFF as well as cross linking them. The bigger issues are ABI differences, but that only matters if you are trying to link object files that use different ones. Then the linker has to put in some kind of swizzle/thunk/trampoline (depending on just how different they are). In most cases people avoid all of that hassle by just adding alternate system call entry points to their kernel that behave like the emulated OSes and run a complete second software stack with the the emulated OSes dynamic linker and libraries. It takes a lot more ram but it is much simpler.

Re:Different executable formats

[Anonymous Coward]

You could use Linux's binfmt_misc support to run Mach-O binaries directly, if you have everything else already taken care of. Linux isn't tied exclusively to ELF. For example you can set it up so that running a Windows exe will launch it using Wine.

Re:Different executable formats

[LiquidFire_HK]

Wine seems to be able to load PE executables just fine, so I don't see how loading Mach-O binaries would be any more difficult (I am not familiar with either of PE, Mach-O and ELF, so I may be wrong, but I am simply stating it's not impossible). Same goes for the kernels.

Re:Different executable formats

[Anonymous Coward]

You need a dynamic binary translator: http://www.transitive.com/

Funnily enough

[simong]

I was just thinking about this coming back from lunch. OS X has become the pragmatic choice of many sysadmins simply because it is the best of both worlds: you get a GUI OS on (generally) reliable hardware that will run Microsoft Office (if you must) but also has a full command line interface that will run most Unix tools without any fiddling. Part of OS X's success is wholly due to this, and the Linux/FOSS community has responded by making the Linux front end more Mac-like with Compiz, Beryl and Etoile.
In short, you aren't going to gain anything by running Linux, except some nebulous feeling of self-satisfaction about something or other, and you are going to lose an awful lot. Running Windows on a Mac makes the Baby Jesus cry; running Linux exclusively gives him slight heartburn.

Re:Why?

[jessecurry]

I'd have to ask what environment you write code in. I find that Xcode on OS X is one of the best environments that I've ever developed in, there are a few things about the IDE that bother me, but it's great overall and is getting better with each new release, and designing websites is really where OS X shines.
I can agree with you on Linux being an easier to use server platform, but OS X runs almost all of the same tools so that may change if I used it as a server more often.

Market Share

[bernywork]

I know this is really stating the obvious, but it comes down to this, market share. Windows has a large market share, and therefore has a large amount of developers building applications. There is also a lot of work done on WINE by CodeWeavers and Cedega, these are builds of WINE that are commecially supported for applications and gaming respectively. (Not to take anything away done by others on WINE, but these people are contributors as well)

The real reason that these companies exist, is that there isn't THAT much of a demand for Mac apps on Linux. There is a large demand for Windows apps on Linux because there are so many Windows developers and subsequently applications that run on Windows. That's why we have WINE.

It would be possible I guess to do Carbon and Cocoa on Linux, re-implement the APIs, but for the amount of applications that there are on Mac that aren't on Windows, there isn't much point.

If Apple opensourced Carbon and Cocoa (Not likely) then I guess they would get ported to Linux by someone, but till then, someone isn't going to do this as the amount of developers out there just isn't high enough. There isn't the interest.

Re:Market Share

[fermion]

There must be a need and a demand. There are plenty of APIs out there that are not ported to every OS. There are open source projects that go no where, even though one would think there is a need.

MS Windows is meant to work with anything x86 compatible, so it is easy to emulate it as the basic have to be simple. One can either emulate the chipset, which is what VPC did, or one can emulate the API, which is what codeweavers does. *nux is even better, as it is meant to run on anything that meets some basic requirements, and most computers in the past 10 years do.

But Mac OS is meant to run on a very specific hardware base, and though that base has been generalized, it is still of limited support. One complains that MS Vista does not support all the devices. I suspect it supports more than Apple. It has to as MS products are supposed to run on any piece of junk that you throw at it. It is the cheap alternative. Why would you want to emulate something that is requires tighter specs than one has right now. Even if it someone did it, it would be customer service nightmare.

But it depends on what one wants to emulate. One could emulate the GUI look and feel with a theme type thing on any OS. One could write a finder application, or even interface spotlight in the Linux file index. One could create a whole new compatability layer between the open source darwin and the user, which would be the most useful solution. But why, when one can shell a $1200 for a mac that can is tighter spec than on finds on average, and can now run almost anything you throw at it?

I want to take something that's supported...

[Anonymous Coward]

...and turn it into something that's not supported.

No really, I want to hear tech support ROTFLTAO when I call to tell them that Photoshop won't save my file.

This won't happen

[njfuzzy]

This isn't something that can happen. There's just not enough demand for it, and there never will be. Why? Because, unlike Windows, Mac OS X is good enough as it is. The only certain benefit of Windows is "lots of applications", so of course trying to merge that benefit into another OS makes sense. The benefit of Mac OS X *is* Mac OS X. You're being silly trying to move a disadvantage (second place in app availability) and move it onto a platform with few advantages or differences.

Re:Why?

[HairyCanary]

If ideological reasons were the basis for wanting to run Linux on a Mac, then that is a half-assed conversion. Take an expensive, proprietary machine just to put a free OS on it? A better idea would be to sell the Mac (especially since they hold value so well) and build a PC from parts. That is more ideal, as it makes the hardware a bit more free as well. And financially it makes a lot more sense.

I don't see any other good reason to do the conversion except for ideology. I own a couple of Macs, and a couple of PCs -- and the only reason I forked over the premium for the Mac hardware was so I could run OSX. If I wanted to run Linux I'd save my money and buy another PC.

Fixed

[Anonymous Coward]

You can. Welcome to 1995.

Seriously, being able to replace parts yourself if nothing new. We even had incremental upgrades on a couple of our beige boxes. Yes, opening the machine up and changing parts around can void your warranty, but why would you expect Apple to make any guarantee about your ability to not screw things up?

Re:Why?

[wwwillem]

I was thinking along the same lines as GP. And you are correct about your explaining the urge and ideas of "going FOSS".

But if poster is a "proprietary stuff" hater, than why in the first place does he land an iMac on his desk. Is that an "Open Platform"?

So, in his place I would (as GP) go the "Parallels" route. Just run Linux next to OS-X in a virtualized environment.

Thoughts

[RAMMS EIN]

Some of my thoughts, in no particular order:

- The Officially Sanctioned API (TM) for OS X apps is Cocoa. This is basically an extension of OpenStep. So is GNUStep. GNUStep even aims to implement Cocoa's extensions so as to allow Cocoa apps to be linked with GNUStep. However, for the time being, compatibility is incomplete and only at the source level. You might have some luck compiling GNUStep apps on Cocoa/OSX, but not running compiled Cocoa apps on GNUStep/Linux.

- Some people tried to get Darwin binary compatibiltiy into NetBSD. However, the project is now dead, purportedly due to lack of user interest. This is the only Darwin binary compatibility project I am aware of. What this means is that, at the moment, you can only run Darwin (AKA OS X) executables on Darwin.

- QEMU is a fast and open source emulator that can be used to emulate, among others, x86 PCs, AMD64 PCs, and Power Macs. This should allow you to run OS X as a guest OS. If you use QEMU to emulate an x86 on an x86, or an x86 or AMD64 on AMD64, it should run close to native speed. That is, as far as the CPU is concerned. Other hardware, graphics hardware in particular, will not have native performance.

- I've been a GNU/Linux user for over ten years. I also used Mac OS X for a couple of years. Eventually, I got frustrated with it and installed Linux on my iBook. I've never looked back. Of course, I am primarily a GNU/Linux and BSD user, which causes the little (sometimes significant) oddities of OS X to frustrate me. If you're primarily an OS X user, this will likely work the other way around.

- GNU/Linux does have some definite advantages over OS X. Just throwing down a few: more customizability, easier maintenance (given a decent package manager, such as apt-get), better compatibility with open-source software, and several possible advantages that depend on your choices: lower memory usage, lower latency, lower disk usage.

- Given that you have a Mac, OS X also has some advantages over GNU/Linux. Among others: it supports your hardware (what you get from Apple, anyway; Linux has the edge when it comes to third-party hardware), companies are more likely to support it (think software, hardware, and manuals), and ... well, can't think of anything more right now.

- As for why there is no compatibility layer yet: probably just because it's a monumental task. Think about how old Wine is and how well it works. Then think about Apple's yearly OS upgrades. Then consider that Apple has also moved architectures (PPC -> x86) since the introduction of OS X, and probably will again (x86 -> AMD64 - they ship that hardware, but the OS is still at least mostly x86). Then look at GNUStep and the instructions for building it (you're allowed to shiver at this point). A Mac OS X compatibility layer won't happen anytime soon.

Re:Thoughts

[Guy Harris]

Then consider that Apple has also moved architectures (PPC -> x86) since the introduction of OS X, and probably will again (x86 -> AMD64 - they ship that hardware, but the OS is still at least mostly x86).

Leopard will, at least, be supporting both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of most system libraries and frameworks, which is less "moving from x86 to AMD64/Intel 64/x86-64/whatever" than "more fully supporting both PPC64 and AMD64/Intel 64/x86-64/whatever" - it's not as if Leopard will support only 64-bit binaries.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well I find that in KDE the desktop environment itself is a great way to code (Konqueror can open remote locations as if they were local, Kwrite does syntax highlighting, global keyboard shortcuts bound to recompiling, multiple desktops to keep things organized, etc.). I'm certainly not trying to say that OS X isn't a good environment for coding. Rather, I'm saying that some people (such as myself, and possibly the original poster) have come to prefer the Linux environment for some tasks. I fully admit that this is largely a matter of preference (e.g. I love keyboard shortcuts and find OS X slightly lacking in that department, compared to KDE).

It's also possible to want to switch to Linux for mixed ideological/pragmatic reasons. For instance, you agree with "free software ideology" but you still need to, pragmatically, get your work done. If you find that (for instance) you're about equally efficient on OS X and Linux, then you'd feel "honour-bound" to switch to Linux. However if you can't find an equivalent free-software app to replace a proprietary OS X app you've come to depend on, you may search out ways to be able to keep running that app within Linux. This may be the situation the original poster finds himself in.

(P.S.: My software projects are not enormous or complicated, so take my opinions on coding environments with a grain of salt. I admit it's been awhile since I've given Xcode a try... I may have to take another look at it.)

Re:Of course you can't

[Cheerio Boy]

*sprays can of Troll-Be-Gone*

Damn. This stuff must be expired!

Either that or I'm not using enough of it...

If not, why not?

[Lally Singh]

If not, why not?

Because it's a terrible, terrible idea. The Mac software stack is *large*, with API compatibility going back 20 years. 3 full-size APIs are supported (bsd, carbon, and cocoa), and they're all constantly being improved by apple. Any such project, while also being an absurd waste of time, could never catch up. Not to mention all the GPU stuff they're doing these days, integrated into the window server (Quartz Extreme, CoreAnimation, etc.). Feel like extending X11 to get decent performance? I don't, and neither does anyone else.

You've already gone past the hurdle that keeps most from using Linux: buying a Mac. If you want all the linux software, just download port from http://www.macports.org/ and let it download prebuilt binaries of traditionally linux applications for your mac. The website is crap but the tool's good and the repository is active and well maintained. They run just like the linux side, only you don't have to start hating your life by using Linux as your desktop OS. Switching back from OS X to Linux is about as painful as shoving a screwdriver in your eye. There's no point.

Some corrections:
  * Parallels/VMWare aren't emulating anything. They're using newish x86 instructions to let the system run 2 OS's simultaneously
  * Ever consider recompiling? I mean, it's called open source for a reason.

Also, if you're gonna tinker, consider Solaris. It's free and Parallels supports it with nice X11 extensions for mouse sharing, etc. Also, it's BrandZ lets you run Linux binaries.

Re:If not, why not?

[Anonymous Coward]

[Linux applications] run just like the linux side, only you don't have to start hating your life by using Linux as your desktop OS. Switching back from OS X to Linux is about as painful as shoving a screwdriver in your eye. There's no point. I did, and it actually felt like removing that painful screwdriver. The many X11 apps I use were no second class citizens any more (run like the linux side? Ha!), interesting pieces of software had no "pay up!" nag screens, I could customize far more and better. You sound like someone who extends his needs to everyone else. Or do you live in the reality distortion field already?

Re:If not, why not?

[Bert64]

The BSD API is the easiest one to reimplement, there are already plenty of BSD implementations available under the BSD license, which you can reuse...
The Cocoa APIs are already partially implemented by GNUStep...
Carbon is considered obsolete and being deprecated, it might not even be worth implementing.
And funny you mentioned BrandZ, you could run Darwin/OSX binaries on Linux in much the same way you can run Linux binaries on solaris... The architecture is the same, just the syscalls you need to change...
As for CoreImage etc, are they not built on top of OpenGL? Linux already has an implementation of OpenGL... Once you retarget the calls Aqua makes to target the Linux GL libs it shouldn't be that hard to get running.
Remember you don't need to reimplement all the libraries to make it useable, you reimplement the kernel and run the original libraries on top of it (thats how solaris does linux binaries).

Re:If not, why not?

[TheRaven64]

Carbon is considered obsolete and being deprecated, it might not even be worth implementing. Partially true. A lot of low-level stuff can only be done in Carbon, and it is the primary choice for applications ported from Windows, including most Adobe products.

Re:If not, why not?

[Creepy]

My understanding of Virtualization environments is they essentially run a small OS (e.g. Linux) that runs other OS's in a "transparent emulator." Essentially, the master OS gives time slices for each of the the children OS's to run natively except for any I/O (including startup such as BIOS), which it needs to direct and handle itself (for many reasons). As far as I know, this technically requires no "new instructions," but due to a design issue, IA-32 has been problematic for virtualization (specifically, hardware managed TLBs which can cause page faults), so there may be some special instructions or code that emulates those instructions.

That said, after peeking at the source code of MoL, I don't see a ton of work that would need to be done to port it, but it wouldn't be trivial. MacHeadersOSX.pch needs an Intel define, any filesystem I/O would need some work (didn't actually find those files), and most importantly, an EFI or BIOS (if the Boot Camp firmware update is loaded) handler needs to be written to handle devices. I'm not sure how ethernet packets are handled in the code, but there may be endian issues because OSX on PPC wouldn't need to translate packets to big-endian. I don't own an Intel mac, so it's doubtful I'll do the port (heck, my mac is 8 years old already).

In response to your answer for "why not," the same thing happens on the Windows side, and as I understand it, WINE does not implement many of the APIs deprecated for unification (when Windows 2000 was released there was a unified API to bridge the kernel changes and move the 95/98/Me crowd to the new kernel and not destroy their app investment). Apple has a similar large set of APIs that could reasonably be skipped. Still, it's a huge undertaking with a fraction of the programmers that WINE enlists, so probably unlikely unless market share increases.

Re:If not, why not?

[Lally Singh]

Carbon's what you use if you're doing C++. It's got a pretty solid API, and is in *no* way being deprecated.

Admittedly, it's a lot easier to develop GUIs in Cocoa, just b/c of the language features. But, if you want to ever ship on more than one platform, you're already doing a C++ backend.

Purposes

[simpl3x]

That probably could have been stated better! I believe the question is what is each good for? If free is a goal, then why not run Linux as an OS? But, why on Apple hardware, not that the cost is bad nowadays compared with the "general" hardware quality and design if that's your thing.

If you need OS X applications, why not run Linux through Parallels or some VM? If Linux is your primary OS, use BootCamp to allow access to OS X. These approaches make sense depending upon your needs. Want access to everything at the same time -- Parallels. Want to run everything within Linux, and only need to access OS X once in a while -- BootCamp. Want to run open applications -- us X11. This doesn't seem any more complicated than using Windows and OS X applications. But if performance is an issue, why are you using a consumer machine?

Aside from workflow and high performance issues, it has never been so easy to work across platforms, and frankly I feel that Apple has done a pretty decent job of developing the right resources.

Re:Purposes

[Anthony Baby]

I've stated my reasons in a couple of responses. I actually was surprised that the journal entry got published when nothing else I deliberately hoped to be published EVER was. Had I thought it would have been, I would have explained my situation better. All apologies. In case you don't find my responses...

I am a Mac and Linux user. For me, it doesn't make sense to buy a Windows PC in order to run Linux. I guess you have to be a Machead in order to get that. I could build one of course, but I don't think I could do as good a job building a rig that is as silent and as integrated as my iMac. I'm not up on current PC design trends. Moreover, I already own the iMac and I use it for applications such as Aperture and Shake, neither of which has a suitable equivalent on Windows or Linux. I don't have a reason to virtualize Linux on Mac OS X. To me that doesn't really make sense unless a person needs a sandboxed Linux installation and not generally a set of Linux applications. It's just that, recently I have been dealing with flaky behavior out of my MacTel that has not existed on my PowerPC that's interrupting my work. I was hoping that were it possible to use Aperture or Shake on Linux, I would have increased stability. Maybe all I need is the new Finder that's coming.

The iMac is a consumer machine, yes. But it is a good machine. This is the 24" iMac which is better classified as a prosumer machine. It's not junk, and it won't buckle under pressure at hardware level. This whole consumer/professional thing is a bit silly irrelvant anyway don't you think? The code I'd write on my iMac is no different than the code I'd write on a Mac Pro. Aperture is incredibly fast on this machine.

Re:Why?

[thejam]

Macs are more expensive on the low end, but suprisingly cheaper on the high end. I recently saved $800 buying an 8-core Mac Pro instead of a similar spec'd Dell. Indeed, the Dell didn't have 3GHz chips, nor could I buy them separately to make the PC myself (which I confess I didn't want to do for the consulting gig the machine's for). It runs Ubuntu Feisty quite nicely; I don't even have OS X on it!

Re:Why?

[jesterpilot]

I can think of a few reasons. One is the possibility to run a different desktop like KDE (Yes, mac-zealots, there are people who do not like the mac-GUI.) Another is package management: as far as i know OSX does not have a feature which enables you to install or update your software in large batches. Another would be a need or wish to develop for the Linux-platform.

Relax...

[Savage-Rabbit]

I just want to know why you would want to replace OS X with Linux? I understand the FOSS ideals, but you could always run linux in a virtual machine. I've installed Linux on quite a few of my Macs over the years, but since OS X I find that almost all of the linux functionality is sitting right in OS X.
What do you hope to gain by installing Linux as the full-time OS? Please don't flame me, I'd like some logical points, or even a "just because". Relax... just be glad that he didn't ask for advice on how to replace OS X on his Mac with Windows Vista. If he had done that your computer would have melted the moment you loaded this article from the combined heat of thousands of flamewars and outraged comments. But all fun aside... What is wrong with "just because" as a reason to install Linux on a Mac? As has been pointed out by other people in previous discussions on this forum: Nerds do not need a reason to do nerdy things.. I applaud his nerdyness and urge him to actively avoid trying to justify what he plans to do, it would completely take the fun out of doing it.

Virtualization

[Craig Ringer]

A better bet would be virtualization, given the realities of market share and the amount of time such a compatibility effort would take for relatively poor results. The Mac platform is also such a moving target that any such layer would be outdated by the time it was even close to working.

Unfortunately, Apple don't want to you run their precious OS in a virtual container. They want to force you to do everything else in a virtual container instead. They won't sell you a license to their OS for user in a virtual environment, and they won't permit you to run a license you own in a virtual environment even on their own hardware.* They are proving reasonably successful at using technical measures to enforce this. As such, you will have to run anything else you want to use under VMWare/Parallels, dual boot, or endure Apple's rather unpleasant X11 support.

* I find this highly amusing - in a "kill them all" kind of way - since they like to complain so much about MS's anti-virtualization terms. Kettle? Pot? . IMO all such terms are nothing short of stupid, irrespective of the vendor.

Re:Why: Free as in Freedom!

[Anonymous Coward]

Escape the proprietary trap, no matter how lick-able!

Uphill battle

[Stele]

Let's see -

Classic -> Carbon
Carbon -> Mach-O
PPC -> Intel/Universal

Aren't we due for a new architecture/API soon?

It's hard enough keeping up with porting existing applications.

Re:Why?

[Verte]

The graphics libraries are quite an important part of a mac application, and some things that an application can assume to be there under OS X have no direct parallel in X. link. I don't think an API wrapper from Quartz to X etc would be trivial :P

Re:Why?

[ZachPruckowski]

Going from Linux to Mac is pretty straightforward. OS X has an X11 install (it's available on the install disk, but not installed by default), glibc, python, php, and stuff. You can install the KDE libraries from source, and I think KDE 4 will have a Mac binary.

However, the question is asking about going from Mac to Linux, which is more difficult.

Some rationales for an OSX-Linux 'switch'.

[delire]

People I know seem to have 'switched' for reasons that are perhaps most eloquently stated by Dive Into Python author (and veteran Apple user) Mark Pilgrim:

In many ways, the tale of my switch is more of the same old story. Mac OS X was "free enough" to keep me using something that was not in my long-term best interest. But as I stood in the Apple store last weekend and drooled over the beautiful, beautiful hardware, all I could think was how much work it would take to twiddle with the default settings, install third-party software, and hide all the commercial tie-ins so I could pretend I was in control of my own computer.

So he went and bought an IBM machine.. and put Ubuntu on it.

He has also expressed what has frustrated many, that Apple's love of closed formats can result in data-loss and/or data not being readable in future.

I'm not claiming that either Free Software or open formats are a silver bullet. There are many risk factors, and Free Software mitigates some of them some of the time. There are many layers -- data on top of applications on top of operating systems on top of hardware -- and open formats can reduce the friction between some of them some of the time. They're both lubricants that help you to slide out one layer and replace it without the whole thing toppling down. Apple would prefer that I not replace any of their layers, and they have gone out of their way to increase the friction between them.

Which brings us back to John Gruber's oranges. His counter-argument -- that lock-in hasn't been a problem for me yet, so why all the fuss now -- could not be further from the truth. It's been a constant problem for 22 years. Much of the data I've spent my life creating has been lost or seriously degraded through a series of proprietary formats and forced migrations. This is why I felt so betrayed, in particular, by Mail.app "upgrading" me away from mbox format. It took a lot of forethought on my part, not to mention actual time and effort, to convert all my disparate mail archives from all those different mail programs. I finally got everything into a single archive in an open, stable format... and just 3 short years later, Apple found a way to screw me one last time. It'll be the last time they get the chance.

Naturally he can run FOSS MTA's, clients and mailbox formats on OS/X but his point is that the Linux (as a platform) is concerned with open-formats right from the get-go without any fight, tweaking, hackery or worry about the OS itself dropping application support in future. Transparency and decentralisation actually come to be things you trust over time. For this reason if one cares for the longevity of their data - in the sense of future readability - Linux is the wiser choice over OS/X. In 8 years with Linux I haven't had to worry at all about the things he (and many others) complain about above even once.

There is great comfort to be found in the Linux community's commitment to/love of open-standards and transparency and this, as I understand it, is a very valid reason to justify a switch.

Re:Why?

[Bert64]

Some people like to buy a package of hardware known to work together well...
The beauty of the hardware market as it stands, is that we do have that choice. The biggest problem people have with proprietary software is that most of it tries to prevent people having that same choice over software.
Laptops are also much harder to build from bare components.

I'm advocating choice in all areas... So long as it has no effect on me (the prevalence of proprietary protocols/formats does) i don't care what other people run, so long as i'm free to make my own choices.

Linux on Mac

[rev_karol]

I put Ubuntu on my macbook recently and was seriously impressed. Really looks up to scratch for the desktop. First off, pretty much everything worked without too much googling. Picked up the graphics, sound, wireless, etc., no problem. I read I can get the webcam working quite easily too. The only thing I didn't try was the dual screen/extended desktop. The compiz stuff worked as soon as I turned it on (I'd miss exposé otherwise). I have a usb tv-receiver that won't work but I expected that since it's built for Mac. It was the responsiveness that really got me though, Ubuntu was far snappier than OSX (and I've 2GB of memory) - Mac apps like to think about things for a while sometimes (and they're not using the CPU to think, whatever the hell they're doing).

There are a couple of Mac apps I'd miss. Number one is Omnigraffle. Really handy for making diagrams. There's nothing close on linux as far as I can see (although I've just tried the OpenOffice Draw program and there's potential there). Second one is Keynote. OSX also has PDF built in as a native format, which is really nice, and the drag and drop support is unparalleled.

I use Linux in a virtual machine on Mac for college. It's about a 2GB code base (or something ridiculous) so I won't be trying to recompile for mac any time soon. It works, but native would be much nicer.

I think the Apple hardware is pretty decent. They cram a lot of good stuff into a small space. I've been hard pressed to get all the same features in a Dell for the same price last time I tried (and it's usually twice the size/weight).

So I think Linux on Mac makes sense for some of us.

Re:Linux on Mac

[Anonymous Coward]

Try Dia as a replacement for Omnigraffle.

Re:Linux on Mac

[Anonymous Coward]

The Compiz features bundled with Feisty make-up a small subset of Compiz Fusion which does include an exposé-like function called Scale IIRC. Compiz Fusion is scheduled to be released with the next Ubuntu release, Gutsy Gibbon.

mod parent back up

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoever modded that as "troll" has no sense of humour - at least, *I* read it as a joke.

Re:mod parent back up

[MrHanky]

YHBT. Clearly 2017 is a planet name written in so-called 'elite speak'. It's the planet Zoit. That's where Wine's full Win32 API will appear first. Mr Derrida won yet again. Put that in your pipe and deconstruct it.

Re:mod parent back up

[Anonymous Coward]

I also read it as a *joke* but since "Mr Derrida has failed to expose binary oppositions within the post and was therefore unable to demonstrate that it's oppositions are culturally and historically defined, even reliant upon one another, he has also failed to suggest that the text's opposed concepts are ambiguous, making the meaning fluid as well", well, I gave it a second though and I'm no laughing any more.

--
Deconstruct jokes

Re:mod parent back up

[DaffyDuck101]

YHABT. Time to check up on Jacques Derrida I guess :)

Re:mod parent back up

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the planet Zoit. That's where Wine's full Win32 API will appear first. Mr Derrida won yet again.

Zoit? We are talking WIN32 here, are you sure the planet isn't actually named Sploit?

Re:Why?

[beelsebob]

1) Mac OS has an X server, you're free to run KDE or Gnome on it, should you for some reason want to.
2) OS X has two package managers -- fink and MacPorts. Both of which btw, will quite happily install KDE or Gnome for you.

Go lay down until the 'urge' goes away

[whjwhj]

> I have the urge to commit my 24" Core 2 Duo iMac to a single Linux operating system

My advise is go lay down until the 'urge' goes away. Unless you've got some compelling reason to take a shiny 24" iMac and turn it into a piece of crap by removing OS X. Which I doubt. As a web developer I can understand having Linux around for this and that but to replace OS X with Linux lock, stock, and barrel is generally just ... well I'm trying to be fair here but the only word I can find for it is 'stupid'. It's stupid.

I mean, don't you have work to do? Why spend time on this? It's weird.

Re:Go lay down until the 'urge' goes away

[Vardamir]

Before really using OS X I thought it must be a great OS. Built on BSD, right? Well, after administering a cluster running OS X 10.3 for over a year, I've slowly come to despise most of what Apple does (because of ridiculous flaws and policies related to OS X, and for other things).

Despite this, I'd probably keep OS X installed, just in case I needed it, but I definitely would not want to use it as my main OS. I'd start to get sick after using it for too long I think.

Re:Go lay down until the 'urge' goes away

[whjwhj]

> I've slowly come to despise most of what Apple does

Like what? Building and supporting an OS that's actually usable? The trouble with Linux is that it's simply NOT usable for 99.9998% of the population. From a usability standpoint, Linux is a fetid pile of shit. It's fucking awful. Non-starter for virtually everybody. Mac OS X, by contrast, is rather easy to learn and use.

So unless you've got some specific reason why OS X didn't work for what you were trying to accomplish (which is possible) then I cry foul. Plus, if you're wanting to run Linux, go run it on a PC!! What's the deal with people wanting to run Linux on a Mac??? I just don't get it. Stupidity.

Re:Go lay down until the 'urge' goes away

[Bonobo_Unknown]

This is the best response to the question.

I'd have modded you up if I had any points...

Re:Go lay down until the 'urge' goes away

[whjwhj]

tyvm! :)

Re:Go lay down until the 'urge' goes away

[alderX]

Thats my reasons:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=257169&cid=200 46411

Re:Go lay down until the 'urge' goes away

[whjwhj]

Your earlier post concerning OS X raises valid points. You identified a few UI annoyances, at least one or two I bumped into myself.

But, compared to Linux .... well, you can't even compare!

You think KDE has a better UI? You must be kidding me.

The inconsistencies and missing features within Linux leave me gasping for air. There is absolutely no comparison. I'll give you an easy one: Installing an application. Here's another: audio. I had Linux running on standard Wintel hardware on my last workstation. No audio. Spent 10 minutes trying to figure it out and then gave up. No fucking way should something like that take more than 10 minutes to figure out. Here's another: Printers. Here's another: Scanners. All this shit is a pain in the ass in Linux. On a Mac it just works. I wonder how many days it would take to figure out how to hook up my Firewire DV camera to a Linux box? I'm just going to keep wondering because I'll be dammed if I'm going to subject myself to that sort of hell.

The second anybody is required to use a shell for anything the game's off.

Here's the deal: I'm no slouch. I've been programming for years. But every time I find myself on a Linux box I am constantly bumping into shit that doesn't work. Any time I want to get shit to work or I want to do something ever so slightly outside of what was delivered and supported by the distro I find myself in this quagmire of configuration files and shell commands. It absolutely fucking sucks.

Suggesting that Linux's UI is somehow better than OS X reveals a staggering lack of perspective and maturity. I'm very sorry to bust your bubble but ... I don't know, man. You're take on this is simply messed up. Techies are switching to Macs in groves. Get with the times, dude.

Re:Go lay down until the 'urge' goes away

[whjwhj]

btw -- even if I were to accept your fantasy about Linux and KDE having the superior UI it still doesn't explain why the original poster would want to run Linux on Mac hardware. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Re:Go lay down until the 'urge' goes away

[Anthony Baby]

Hehehe, yes I do have work to do. And Finder has been preventing me from getting it done by wigging out on me at random times. I'll probably just wait for Leopard and the new Finder, but I don't think getting Aperture, Shake, GarageBand, or Logic to run on Linux is stupid.

Re:Go lay down until the 'urge' goes away

[alderX]

> Your earlier post concerning OS X raises valid points. You identified a few UI annoyances, at least one or two I bumped into myself.

Well thats at least something ;-)

> The inconsistencies and missing features within Linux leave me gasping for air. There is absolutely no comparison. I'll give you an easy one:
> Installing an application.

Well I wouldn't say that this is really an OS UI issue, but actually I'am fine with dselect.
There are also tons of more GUI like things of achiving stuff (don't recall how this thing is called in Ubuntu, Mandrake,... - you don't even have to download the application, just select it and hit install).

> Here's another: audio. I had Linux running on standard Wintel hardware on my last workstation. No audio. Spent 10 minutes trying to figure it out and then gave up. No fucking way should something like that take more than 10 minutes to figure out.

Worked out of the box for me - ok maybe I was just luckier. Also I don't see how this is a OS UI issue.

> Here's another: Printers.

Thats funny - you know that both use CUPS? It's pretty easy in Utuntu as well.

> Here's another: Scanners.

Haven't tried that one, so can't comment on it - still it's not a UI think like strange short cuts, broken maximize windows, being only allowed to resize a window by going with the lower right corner,...

> All this shit is a pain in the ass in Linux. On a Mac it just works. I wonder how many days it would take to figure out how to hook up my Firewire DV camera to a Linux box?

It just works - besides USB cameras for instance. Huge issue which just got "solved" recently. The quality of the picture is still very poor. Or how about trying to use a non Apple USB keyboard before the Mac OS X is up and running (making selections in the bootloader).

But again thats all integration of devices stuff not really usability of the UI stuff.

> The second anybody is required to use a shell for anything the game's off.

Why? Because it's effective and does the job?

> Here's the deal: I'm no slouch. I've been programming for years. But every time I find myself on a Linux box I am constantly bumping into shit that doesn't work. Any time I want to get shit to work or I want to do something ever so slightly outside of what was delivered and supported by the distro I find myself in this quagmire of configuration files and shell commands.

Maybe you have the wrong distro then or should separate stuff better. But I actually had this very same problem with Mac OS X. It's all fine as long as you stick with their default. As soon as you want it your way you are out of the game. If I need to I can change anything on a free OS - be it Linux/FreeBSD/... - on Mac OS X I get some shiny hip product. How dare I to try to change that "composition".

> Suggesting that Linux's UI is somehow better than OS X reveals a staggering lack of perspective and maturity. I'm very sorry to bust your bubble but ... I don't know, man. You're take on this is simply messed up. Techies are switching to Macs in groves. Get with the times, dude.

Thank you very for that totally objective view. Ever considered that based on my priorities KDE is just the better deal? Also arguing that other people are switching now is a very lame argument - it's like "eat shit millions of fly's can't be wrong!".

Re:Why?

[AnObfuscator]

That's a good question. For me, my move from OS X to Linux is motivated by several reasons.

1. Portability
OSX runs on Apple Hardware. It can be hacked, sure, to run on some non-Apple systems, but widescale hardware compatibility is lacking (just look at the difficulties in getting a GeForce 8x00 series card running). With Linux, I have a much wider choice of hardware vendors.

2. Flexibility
Linux gives me a lot more control over my OS. While this is pointless for 90% of users, for me, it is very nice to be able to custom compile a kernel with the options I need, recompile any given app for the characteristics I need, and so on. I can enable, disable, theme, customize, and otherwise hack my environment to suit my needs much more easily than in OS X.

3. Security
OSX is pretty good, but I'm a little worried at Apple's highly negative response to security concerns (anyone remember the wireless driver exploit fiasco?). Also Linux offers some features that OSX doesn't currently offer, such as MAC. 10.5 is supposed to have MAC, but I can't find any info on it. While both systems are good, I perceive the Linux market as responding more credibly to security issues.

4. Software Ecosystem
OSX software is great. However, Linux offers me a great deal more choice, and that choice tends to be much more configurable to my needs. While I love the Cocoa API and what it allows apps to do, Linux is catching on fast, and I find that good GNOME or KDE apps perform most, if not all, the functionality I care about in OSX, while being beer free, and offering me more choices (i.e. Anjuta, Geany, Eclipse, KDevelop vs XCode, Eclipse). There's also a lot of software I like to use that aren't available on OSX yet. I'm starting to learn CUDA, for example, and that is not yet offered for OSX. Also, VMWare workstation offers some nice features targeted at developers (such as host-to-VM project deployment & debugging) which I haven't seen offered yet on OSX.

5. Usability
I know a lot of people disagree with this, but I find a lot of OSX's UI broken, at least for how I use my system. I find the window management to be frustrating, the Dock to be very limited, and the lack of decent app launching & management to be very frustrating (although QS does manage to solve app launching in a pretty nice way). GNOME's clean usability and massive customization have allowed me to create a Linux system that I actually find to be more usable for me than OSX.

I guess I could summarize all of that by one word: choice. For my needs and uses, I find the flexibility of Linux far more convenient.

If OSX's behaviors work well for you, and you are happy with Apple's hardware offerings, then you have the choice of OS X instead!

Isn't freedom of choice a great feeling?

You're not doing it right...

[porkchop_d_clown]

You're supposed to drink it. A couple of shots of Troll-be-gone and suddenly everyone you meet is +5 insightful.

Re:You're not doing it right...

[Cheerio Boy]

You're supposed to drink it. A couple of shots of Troll-be-gone and suddenly everyone you meet is +5 insightful. Ahhh! So that's why the can has Abbreviated in front of the name!

Thanks!

Re:You're not doing it right...

[Pollardito]

i knew it couldn't be as easy as applying it directly to my forehead

Re:You're not doing it right...

[vladsinger]

Side effects may include death.

Ask your doctor.

Re:You're not doing it right...

[R2.0]

Ahh. In school it was called "beer", and drinking enough would give all the women +5 "Tits!".

Ask me how I know.

Re:You're not doing it right...

[RealGrouchy]

You're supposed to drink it. A couple of shots of Troll-be-gone and suddenly everyone you meet is +5 insightful. I can certainly testify to that! The folks at the Poison Control centre were very professional with me the last time I drank that stuff!

- RG>

Re:You're not doing it right...

[mrraven]

Ubik! Google Philip K Dick Ubik if you don't know what I mean.

Run Linux Apps on MacBook Pro?

[Doc Ruby]

I thought about getting the 17" MacBook Pro to dualboot MacOSX and Linux, and eventually go the way this story's poster is going. But I'm worried that Linux (Ubuntu) doesn't have all the drivers for every bit of the MacBook's HW.

And, possibly most important, what about that one-button mouse? What do you press to get right-click menus and features? How do you do left+right clicking? Is this even a tiny pain in the ass (or wrist)? What else is subtly, but importantly, different between that MacBook Pro, and, say, the similiarly priced HP 17" notebooks, other than running MacOSX SW?

Re:Run Linux Apps on MacBook Pro?

[xdancergirlx]

The difference between mac notebooks and hp notebooks? About $1000.

The major difference is price, you are not paying for hardware, you are paying for the pretty plastic box and the operating system. You should go with the HP notebooks and explore the MacOSX86 project. I have seen several triple-booting (Windows/MacOSX/Linux) laptops (HPs, Acers, etc.). Ie. you can run MacOS on your AMD64 or Intel notebook (albeit not 100% legally).

In response to the original story, I don't really get why they wouldn't just dual boot... Have a common ext3 or ntfs-3g partition for doing all your work, storage, etc. If you want to use iMovie one day, boot to MacOSX, if you want to use Kino, boot to linux. The same movie could be accessed by both OSes. Why delete MacOSX? That is what you paid the extra $1000 for in the first place!

Re:Run Linux Apps on MacBook Pro?

[Anonymous Coward]

I run Ubunto under Parallels and it works fine. Supposedly VMWare has even better support for Linux.

As for the mouse, you can do it a couple different ways (besides hooking up a two button mouse). You can hold control (I think it is, one of those keys) and click, or you can set it up so you can place two fingers on the trackpad while clicking for a double click. That's what I do. Took a little re-training, but now I'm pretty used to it.

Re:Run Linux Apps on MacBook Pro?

[Anonymous Coward]

What about the one-button mouse? Oh give us all a fucking break. Don't buy a Mac, you moron. In fact, you may want to stay away from computers entirely.

Re:Run Linux Apps on MacBook Pro?

[Doc Ruby]

When I checked a couple of months ago, the Mac was about $1-200 less than the identically spec'd HP, except the Mac has a one-button mouse. The new MacBook Pro might have come in more expensive than that old HP, or even a better HP with the same specs as the new MacBook Pro. But the old MacBook Pro I was looking at is therefore probably even cheaper now. And, unless the day I checked was some kind of fluke, overall the new MacBook Pro should therefore be a little cheaper than its HP version, once the initial demand has played out after a couple-few months.

Re:Run Linux Apps on MacBook Pro?

[Doc Ruby]

So I can config the MacBook Pro trackpad to detect 2 fingers on the trackpad while clicking the only trackpad button, and map that to a right-click? Does that work under OSX, Ubuntu, or both?

Do you get any performance degrade, especially video, from running Ubuntu under Parallels?

Re:Run Linux Apps on MacBook Pro?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, there are a couple ways to configure the trackpad. You can also configure it so tapping on it with one finger is left click, and tapping on it with two is a right click. That annoyed me, but the two finger + button works well for me. There's also two finger scrolling (hold one down, scroll with the other) which is actually pretty handy.

It works in OS X and Windows and Ubuntu under Parallels. Linux under Parallels is fine for 2D stuff. Running Firefox under Ubuntu is pretty similar performance-wise to running it natively. But, Parallels is heavily focused on Windows, so VMWare is supposedly the better option for those planning to make heavy use of Linux on OS X. One thing Parallels doesn't do, for example, is seamlessly move the mouse out of linux like it can with Windows.

Re:Run Linux Apps on MacBook Pro?

[Anonymous Coward]

"And, possibly most important, what about that one-button mouse? What do you press to get right-click menus and features?"

F12. Nothing uses it anyway, so by default (under Ubuntu 7.04) F11 is middle click and F12 is right click.

Re:Run Linux Apps on MacBook Pro?

[xdancergirlx]

If that is what you found, you found a really excellent deal on the mac or a really crappy deal on the HP.

This is as close as I could find for comparison. You can get the HP cheaper on Buy.com or somewhere else but these are both listed on bestbuy so it's a good comparison. The HP is better (twice the harddrive space, bigger screen, etc.) than the Apple and $200 cheaper.

If you wanted to go with an Acer with an AMD turion (I like AMD and find Acers better than HPs, personally), you would get even more for less. These prices are closer than they used to be, but Mac will always be more than the equivalent in a non-mac computer, unless you get suckered.

Mac OS X on Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's how you do it:

Unplug computer.
Put computer back in box it was shipped in.
Return computer to Apple.
Go back to tiddly-winks.

Mac on Linux on PPC yes, Intel? Nope Won't Work.

[aqui]

>>>>> I realize your request is for "intel" MacBooks... but for those of you with PPCs or Developers...

I'm pretty sure Mac On Linux (MOL) won't work for intel machines, but if it did it would more or less do what you want. A short search shows it probably doesn't work, maybe someone should look at porting it to intel hardware (if its doable).

The feature list for processors http://mac-on-linux.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php /Features doesn't mention anything remotely intel.

I think for now the VMWare (answer already given by other posters below) is as good as its going to get. That is simply the problem with closed source stuff.

For those of you reading this post looking for solutions for PPCs though, MOL is probably the way to go.

Mac On Linux supports all of the PPC architectures well, and I've got linux and Mac OS X co-existing nicely
by booting into Ubuntu linux (6.10) and then running Mac On Linux with my OS X install.

Effectively I have Mac OS X in a window on my second workbench and can switch from one OS to the other easily.
I use both linux and mac apps depending which one I like better.

Having a 12" PPC with NVidia closed source crap, I cant run the os in a separate screen yet but with SDL drivers and a screen sized window I get pretty close.

The only thing that doesn't work well in Mac OS X for me right now is sound, (but the MOL team is working on it).
Network etc. is all available (with some configuration, through a TUN device), and a Samba drive lets me access my linux drives from inside MAC OS X (running in MOL).

The only reason I don't boot only into linux is that Sleep, and Video out don't work courtesy of NVIDIA closed source crap... (Admittedly they make nice graphics cards, but I will be choosing my set of hardware based on how well they support open source, which likely means it likely won't be an NVIDIA card, given my current experiences, grumble, grumble ;) ).

MOL can be found here: http://mac-on-linux.sourceforge.net/.
My personal thanks to the MOL team.

(Go ahead mod me off topic if you want, but there are still many users reading about this that have PowerPCs)

ppc w/ altivec..??

[EdelFactor19]

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but you stated you have a core duo mac. That means you aren't running on a PPC to begin with and inherently have no Altivec either yet your Mac OS X apps seem to run fine there don't they?

I'm not going to pretend to know the ins and outs of macs or OS X for that matter, I've been a x86 (Dos->XP) Windows and Linux user my whole life. But I did enough embedded programming and education on the PPC architecture and x86 to tell you that much.

My guess is to deal with it in a likely similar way to those of us dealing with multiple linux distro boots, combinations of windows and linux, and everything else.

I've never really dabbled with WINE myself, so I can't comment on the part about a "M(ac)INE" but what about virtualization. One idea I got from a colleague is to use the vmware converter to convert your actual partitions into vmware images that use actual hard drive partitions as their 'virtual hard disk'. In this way you could boot into one and load any other OS partition on your machine as a VM. granted there are some performance hits, and i know xgl/aiglx don't run in VM's and I could imagine there are some similar eye candy things that won't work from OS X, but that could certainly be one solution.

Notably I do agree that I wish the VM's didnt have to be realized as such a container in the gui's in the sense that it is all contained within one window. It gets chaotic when you have 4 linux virtual desktops and then on one of them have a linux VM with its own set of additional VD's.

Re:ppc w/ altivec..??

[TheRaven64]

That means you aren't running on a PPC to begin with and inherently have no Altivec either yet your Mac OS X apps seem to run fine there don't they? I am running on a Core 2 Duo Mac, but some of my apps are PowerPC apps that use AltiVec. They run in Rosetta, calling native APIs but with their own code being emulated (including mapping a lot of AltiVec operations to SSE3).

Do it the other way round

[Dave_Jones]

Install Virtualbox, http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads on OSX and run Linux therein

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

"One is the possibility to run a different desktop like KDE"

KDE4 has been ported to OSX. There are even binary packages available just a Google search away.
Plus, OSX has an X-Server (it's just that the default UI doesn't use it).

"as far as i know OSX does not have a feature which enables you to install or update your software in large batches"

Fink (apt-like package manager) and Darwinports disagree.

C'mon, what's a BSD without it's ports? (Yes, OS X is a BSD).

"Another would be a need or wish to develop for the Linux-platform"

A VM handles that just fine. Not to mention the GNU toolchain is available via both Fink and Darwinports.

The Answer

[Whatchamacallit]

You cannot do what you are trying to do... i.e. you cannot run Linux and port the OS X applications to Linux.

However, you can increase your RAM (2GB+) and run either VMWare Fusion or Parallels virtual machine software. Both have been getting a great deal of updates and improvements. They both offer full screen mode, etc.

Run Linux in a Virtual Machine and you can do everything you want to do at very near native speed. Run WinXP or Vista even. Run FreeBSD, Solaris x86, etc. All in virtual machines.

You just need enough RAM to run multiple operating systems at the same time. Boot and run Mac OS X and load the other operating systems into virtual machines when you need them. Make sure you have the latest Mac firmware and all the latest Mac OS X patches.

Alternatively, you can use BootCamp (free beta download from Apple) to repartition the disk non-destructively and dual boot Linux and Mac OS X if you really want to.

You "might" be able to load OS X into a virtual machine running under Linux but it will likely not work as Mac OS X checks for the Mac hardware at boot. It won't see the hardware completely inside a virtual machine. There have been some hacks to make it work, but they are dependent on Leopard betas that will expire.

Re:Why?

[tiocsti]

Since when does os x use glibc?

No

[Craig Ringer]

Mac OS X has a subsystem based on BSD, and it uses it for some system tasks and to present a POSIX runtime environment. It's only a very small part of the system and rather a second citizen. Let's not even talk about their X11 support, which is pretty unpleasant to use for anything but the basics.

Only a Mac zealot is likely to tell you it's just a "better unix than unix". Real unix users tend to cry when trying to use it, especially since half the man pages are outdated and completely wrong because Apple changed how everything works but didn't document it.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

Real unix users tend to cry when trying to use it, especially since half the man pages are outdated and completely wrong because Apple changed how everything works but didn't document it.

These must be tears of joyful nostalgia as the real unix user remembers the glory days of the late-eighties, early-nineties when there were literally hundreds of unix variants and they mostly had the same problem, gratuitous incompatibilities and shite documentation. Or maybe it's PTSD.

Anyway, Apple is merely maintaining the ignoble tradition.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

Only a Linux zealot is likely to tell you it's just a "better unix than unix". Real unix users tend to cry when trying to use it, especially since half the man pages are outdated and completely wrong because the thousands of developers changed how everything works but didn't document it.

There, fixed that for you. Pot, Kettle, Black, yadda yadda yadda.

Re:No

[RockoTDF]

Only a Mac zealot is likely to tell you it's just a "better unix than unix". Real unix users tend to cry when trying to use it, especially since half the man pages are outdated and completely wrong because Apple changed how everything works but didn't document it.

I agree with you on the lack of good documentation for sure. I find some of the changes in the CLI to be unnecessary. I have an iBook with OS X and I find the terminal to be frustrating at times for that exact reason. Having said this, I can still see why the scientific crowd loves it. I love it because its damn hard to break, and I can still use unix-y stuff if need be.

Re:No

[Craig Ringer]

People seem to think that because I find fault with Mac OS X, that implies that I find Linux to be perfect. That's absurd, and I've never suggested anything of the sort.

Linux zealots do indeed tend to suffer from many of the same reasoning and reality perception problems as Mac zealots.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

Mac OS X has a subsystem based on BSD,

If by 'subsystem' you mean 'kernel' and 'most BSD command line utilities'.

and it uses it for some system tasks and to present a POSIX runtime environment. It's only a very small part of the system and rather a second citizen.

Complete nonsense. It would be every bit as accurate to level the same accusation at a FreeBSD system. You can't call BSD a second class citizen in MacOS X when the native call to open a file is good old open().

You want to an OS which merely presents a POSIX runtime environment? Windows NT. You want an OS which can actually compile and run standard open source UNIX applications with no abnormal porting efforts? MacOS X.

(And by abnormal porting efforts, I refer to the fact that all UNIX variants have slight incompatibilities, most of which fall outside the scope of POSIX. Sometimes small tweaks are necessary to get an app running on a different UNIX than the one it was originally coded on.)

Let's not even talk about their X11 support, which is pretty unpleasant to use for anything but the basics.

That's all it needs to do. Who wants to use X11 unless they have to?

But more seriously, if the only objection with any teeth to it is that Apple's X11.app isn't designed to be anything like your primary interface to the computer, you've got no valid reason to say MacOS X is only a token BSD UNIX. X11 is not UNIX. (You wouldn't hesitate to call a headless Linux server with no X11 installed a completely valid form of UNIX, would you? Didn't think so.)

Re:No

[myowntrueself]

Real unix users tend to cry when trying to use it

My personal favorite is /etc/fstab

In OSX this file exists and looks as if it contains real mount entries. However it is just some sort of bizarre and perverse 'bling'. It appears to do nothing at all.

One of the first things I wanted to do on the Mac was to set it up to mount some NFS shares at boot time. So I added them to /etc/fstab and.... nothing!

I mean WTF??? Why have an /etc/fstab if it doesn't do anything? Its just *misleading* and useless. Like tits on a bull!

Re:No

[Craig Ringer]

It was my pet peeve as well. They've "fixed" it for 10.4 by deleting /etc/fstab and still not fixing the man page.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

I just want to know why you would want to replace OS X with Linux?

Try to implement a decent incremental backup solution in OS X. It simply can't be done.

In Linux (or BSD) this is ridiculously easy. A simple script using rsync and cp w/ hard links does the trick. There are also software packages that make it even easier.

Once Leopard comes out, Time Machine may or may not be the answer, but I'm talking about right now.

Just because you can? Or why exactly?

[dindi]

While many times I do stuff just because I can (installing linux where ever for example), I kind of question why you would really do that.

Do not get me wrong, I have a Linux laptop, a Macbook, an XP box, a linux box, an asterisk linux server, and a minimac, and I have Solaris and BSD in Vmware players for testing....

But I got a mac for the nice hardware and the unix it is tunning with a kickass GUI. I run OSX and X apps on that machine, and leave the Linux stuff for linux, and the windows stuff for windows.

I mean if you want to run win apps on a mac, you have parallels, dual boot, and Vmware. You can run linux apps (Well X apps, BSD apps, anything that compiles).

I have no answer for your question, because for me it does not make sense at all. Why not leave the mac alone and get some minipc and run Linux on it?

Belongs to the truth: I use linux as my main desktop for 10 years at least (KDE, Gnome, tried E, Wmaker and many more) and recently I came to the point of wanting to get something that works perfectly as a laptop OS and gui.... Since I found that OSX on a mac is a perfect alternative, I am really shocked seeing someone who wants to put linux on a mac, then tries to find a way to run mac apps on it.

But then again, I am just wondering, and you probably know why it makes sense for you, so do not take my curiosity in a bad way.

Another Alternative

[DiscoNick]

Keep OS X and just run linux in VMWare Fusion. OS X has its perks... if Apple releases firmware updates, you'll get them. If you're running linux, you won't.

Re:Another Alternative

[Slashcrap]

Keep OS X and just run linux in VMWare Fusion. OS X has its perks... if Apple releases firmware updates, you'll get them. If you're running linux, you won't.

A better solution is to run OSx86 (OSX hacked to run on non-Apple hardware) under VMWare on Linux :

http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/Main_P age

I'm not saying it's necessarily technically better, but when you tell Mac zealots what you're doing a lot of them will get so angry that a heart attack or cerebral hemorrhage becomes quite likely.

Can I have a +5 Informative Troll, please?

Re:Why?

[ZachPruckowski]

It doesn't, but I'm pretty sure xCode installs it for some reason.

Your user ID says it all...

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, "Lamborghini Diablo"... is this the 80s? There have been several variations to the Murcielago and Gallardo, and there you go joking about Diablo. LOL.

Re:Your user ID says it all...

[Chilled urine.]

Right, "Lamborghini Diablo"... is this the 80s? There have been several variations to the Murcielago and Gallardo, and there you go joking about Diablo. LOL.

Dude I see no signs of joking around I think he's totally serious. He wants to make good use of his old car and probably has a few Murcielagos and Gallardos sitting in the garage already.

How about just running linux apps on mac

[mehemiah]

Between MacPorts and Fink, i could potentially run any Linux app I would use under x and be fine. I can run Kde or Xfce and have them running in quartz wm / Xfree86 or X.org right next to aqua. Now that they've fixed some of the HFS issues with the command line apps, the whole thing runns smoothly. You're millage may vary.

Intel VT-X

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been running Ubuntu Linux and various versions of Windows for some time under Parallels Desktop for Mac. It is not "inefficient".

Think before you post

[Anonymous Coward]

Was there some real thought into making this submission? You can run nearly everything that linux runs on OSX. The reverse is not true. If you love OSX so much, why would you install Linux? I'm a full-time linux user (home & work), and I think that's retarded.

Re:Think before you post

[steak]

seconded

http://finkproject.org/

Re:Why?

[AnObfuscator]

(P.S.: My software projects are not enormous or complicated, so take my opinions on coding environments with a grain of salt. I admit it's been awhile since I've given Xcode a try... I may have to take another look at it.)

XCode is a very good IDE, and well worth taking a second look. But if you're used to KDevelop, you probably won't find much new in XCode. It's really a wash between the two, IMHO. But like all things, try it and see. I think KDevelop does debugging a little better, but XCode does documentation and project management a little better... YMMV.

Re:Of course you can't

[lordtoran]

usable and reliable as Windows 95 Is that another one of your truths? I remember people spending months continuously installing it on the same PC because of its awesome reliability.

Erm.... RockBox?

[mpapet]

Why not have your ipod/linux layer cake and eat it too?

http://www.rockbox.org/

You get all the ipod groupthink on a sound OS.

Re:Erm.... RockBox?

[Anonymous Coward]

if by "sound" you mean "cumbersome", then I guess you're correct!

Re:Erm.... RockBox?

[moonbender]

From the Rockbox mailing list: "What is the progress with figuring out the iPod battery life? I think using Rockbox, it cuts the battery life to about 1/2." That sounds great!

ah, I know what you're talking about

[selfdiscipline]

you must be referring to 120 proof alcohol

Does this even make sense?

[Qwavel]

I acknowledge that the poster might have extenuating circumstances, but in the general case to run Linux on a Mac just doesn't make sense. When you buy a Mac you are paying for the hardware + OS development + huge advertising budget + 38% profit margin (based on their most recent quarterly results). If you want to run Linux you should just go out and buy a PC - the margins are additional costs are very small in comparison.

Re:Why?

[TheRaven64]

In which case, replacing the OS with a free equivalent is a big step in that direction. Replacing one POSIX-compliant OS with another is a much smaller step than replacing all of your applications. If you want to switch from OS X to a pure Free Software environment, I would recommend the following steps:

1. Install Apple's X11 (there's a version built against 7.2, which is much better than the stock version from Apple).
2. Install all of the *NIX apps you want.
3. Run X11 fullscreen, and command-tab to get at your native apps.
4. Once you find you are not ever leaving the X server, log out, log in as >console, and run the X server outside of Quartz.

Congratulations, you are now running nothing but Free Software. If you want, you can swap the kernel, loader, etc. from Apple's APSL versions to a GPL'd set (GNU+Linux) or a BSDL set (*BSD). If you aren't a license fanatic, you can just stick with what you've got until you find a compelling reason to switch.

Mach-O support for linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at this: http://www.uwsg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0612 .1/1219.html

This gives Mach-O file system support for linux and the xnu syscall support. Once this is finished it will enable you to execute mac os x programs on linux (but you need to provide a lot of stuff, like the complete libraries, dynamic linker and so on. But in theory it should work).

But be warned: AFAIK some of the nice mac os x apps are encrypted.

Re:Why?

[tiocsti]

As far as I can tell, this is not the case. It even has strlcpy(), which to me is a strong indication that it is not, in fact, glibc. Most likely derived from FreeBSD's libc, in fact.

Intel iMac + Linux: yay!

[Blimundus]

I bought an iMac, used OSX for three months, and then went back to Ubuntu. I only use OSX to watch TV with my OSX-only Elgato antenna which I got for free with the iMac.

First, I don't care that there are cheaper systems out there that run linux (and may even have better hardware support). I wanted an iMac, and there it is.

Second, I didn't like OSX that much. It looks nice, but it can be very counterintuitive to use. You can also feel that you only get what you pay for: quicktime movies don't play fullscreen, you get demo's for programmes instead of the full programmes, I ended up watching music videos that had watermarks in them to show that I made them with a demo verion of the program (flip4mac or something?). Seeing advertisements of how revolutionary 'Spaces' is in the next version of OSX didn't help either.

Third, I like Ubuntu a lot. I started using it 2,5 years ago on my Inspiron, and the OS suits me that much that I don't ever feel hindered to get things done.

Of course, I could be using virtualisation software; but why would I do that if I only use Ubuntu? Did I tell you that even the (proprietary I guess) Citrix ICA client that I use to work from home works better under Ubuntu than under OSX?

Now for the negative side: my iSight camera doesn't really work well at the moment (under Ubuntu Gutsy 7.10).

Re:Intel iMac + Linux: yay!

[tgv]

OSX isn't half as counter-intuitive as Linux can be (e.g. network administration is really easy under OSX; nothing in it reminds you of the actual /etc/whatever file structure, unlike some Linux tools I could mention), according to me, but tastes differ, ok, I get that.

What I don't get is the rest of your complaints.
- Programs such as VLC and NicePlayer play full-screen, and they're free. And, coincidentally, QT 7.2 does allow fullscreen.
- Under Linux you can also get demo apps. That's because they're commercial programs. You can download nearly any Linux OSS app and run it under OSX with X11. And even the app you mention you prefer under Ubuntu is proprietary!
- Spaces isn't revolutionary at all, you're right there.

If you want to give OSX another chance, just have your account settings open the Terminal.app OR X11 from at login, and you can be very happy. For the rest, check out DarwinPorts: a lot of programs have been ported to OSX and installing them is pretty easy (easier than rpm IMHO, although that's RedHat, I suppose).

It's possible ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've written some proof of concept code that lets me run universal binaries (with x86 code) on my pentium-m linux laptop ... But as mentionned this is limited to the libraries the application use. I can run console app without problem, or even opengl application (only linked to the gl lib), or SDL apps, or X apps. But no cocoa or such ...

The basic idea is just to implement a loaded for the MachO binary format, just putting all the segements at the right place. Then, just relink all references (with some fixups). To lookup symbols you can look them up in local library (so that all gl calls, X calls, posix call ... are directly remapped to the equivalent linux library with dlopen). Finally create a correct stack and call environement and "jump" to the entry point ...

I'd take the rebuilt Chevy any day

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll take the rebuilt Chevy, please.

Re:I'd take the rebuilt Chevy any day

[AshtangiMan]

Nice car, but the guy spent $120,000 on it and is selling it for $95,000.

Re:I'd take the rebuilt Chevy any day

[Anonymous Coward]

Notice - the rebuilt Chevy _is already sold_ for that amount - $95,000. You can buy yourself a couple of brand new Mercedes Benz cars with that amount of money.

Hardware Lock-in

[Mawginty]

I've been using Apple computers for about three years now, and I can definitely see why someone would want to transition out of Apple into something else. I bought my iBook because I needed a laptop and I thought it was a good "bang for the buck" computer (with a student discount I think it was). I grew to like OS X a lot, I bought apps that I liked and I've been very happy with the computer.

But at this point it is starting to get a little long in the tooth, and I'd like to buy another laptop, but I don't like the laptops that Apple happens to be selling right now. MacBook Pros are a little too expensive and a little too big for me, MacBooks are little underpowered (especially in the graphics dept). I can certainly see the appeal of moving to a platform with more hardware choices, but not having to move over sums of data that I've put into platform dependent pieces of software and not having to give up apps that are OS X only that I like. I'll probably just stick it out at this point and wait until Apple starts selling something that I want. But having a WINE equivalent for OS X would allow much greater freedom in hardware configuration.

Re:Why?

[M-RES]

The Finder can open remote locations as though local... (I presume you mean either FTP/AFP/SMB!?), but perhaps I misunderstand. I'm sure BBedit does syntax highlighting. I find I don't need multiple desktops when I can easily CMD-Tab between apps (or use expose), and 10.5 uses 'spaces' which certainly seem like they're following the Linux 'desktops' idea to a point, whilst keeping the traditional Mac environment. But you're right, it's a matter of preference. I'm liking the look of 'spaces' for 10.5, as it bears a remarkable resemblance to how it was possible to set up the Amiga (a desktop 4 times the size of the physical screen which you could scroll around). I run Linux under VPC on OS X from time to time, because I like to have it to hand to show WinPC owners what they COULD be using for free :D But a dual-boot might be the ultimate answer to the problems here I reckon. Replace everything with FOSS where possible, then keep a stripped down OS X boot for those few apps you really can't do without until somthing FOSS turns up.

Re:Of course you can't

[MrMarket]

Who let Ballmer in here? /*ducks flying chair*/

Re:Why?

[despik]

There's also Gentoo/Prefix. Portage is much nicer than either fink or macports.

Here's why Mac OSX doesn't have a WINE-like projec

[mikesown]

The reason a project hasn't started is for three reasons. 1. (primarily) People don't have a need to run Mac apps on Linux. Most of the big commercial apps run on windows too(Mathematica, Quark XPress, Microsoft Office, Adobe Master Collection etc.). 2. The few big apps that are just for Mac OSX are heavily tied to the hardware(e.x. Final Cut Pro uses Core Video, Logic uses Core Audio, most shareware apps use Cocoa). When you talk about making a version of WINE to run Mac OSX apps, you aren't just talking about implementing the basic API. You're talking about reprogramming GPUs to run Core Image/Video. At a time when open source 3d drivers bearly exist, how can you expect anyone to reprogram GPUs to implement a reverse engineered API? 3. Because people are happy with Mac OSX. I know this sounds like a biased statement, but think about it. Mac OSX, from a user standpoint(yes, I know behind the scenes they are radically different, spare me the lecture.) is very similar to Linux. It has the same directory structure, a free x11 client, and can run most Linux software with minimal tweaking(e.x. Fink). Simply put, in my opinion, Mac OSX is Linux + a nice GUI. It provides all of the good underlying stability of a *nix system, with the ease of use which Linux horribly lacks through a very nicely designed GUI. So, if you had a Mac, and had the option of either running Linux, with a fairly premature GUI(as compared to Mac OSX), and which would prohibit you from running Mac apps, and the option of running Mac, which would allow you to run most(if not all) of your Linux apps, Mac apps, and have a nice GUI, which would you choose? Simple: The Mac OS. In short the answer is that because the project wouldn't have a lot of demand, and would entail very very very hard work, it's simply not worth anyone's time to create a WINE for Mac OSX.

Why?

[ChrisA90278]

What do you gain by running Mac Apps on Linux?

About the obnly thing I can think of is with Linux you can run all of the free open source software that is written for Linux but doesn't all most all of this run under Mac OS X? What can Linux do that Mac OS X can't?

The claim that emulation is not efficient may be true but VMware is not emulation. The code runs mostly native under VMware. The problem is that to run two OSes at once you need a lot of memory.

I've got a couple Linux systems and two Macs I use them both at work and at home and for the most part they are interchangeable. The Mac can run most anything the Linux systems can but iLife, Photoshop, Final Cut and iTunes don't run under Linux.

I'd go with Macs all round except that Apple's hardware
offerings are quite limited.

Purpose redux

[nedron]

I agree, what is the purpose here? The first thing I thought was, "does he know he can run the vast majority of Linux software natively under OS X?" That's the beauty of tools like fink and macports. If you find something you want to use, "sudo port install foo".

Even X Windows apps compile, install, and run fine.

The whole reason I made the switch to OS X (from linux) was that I had everything I wanted on the Unix side via Darwin, plus a commercial desktop with commercial app availability.

I'm not sure I'll ever understand questions like this.

-nedrow

whine wine whine

[Tim4444]

Why isn't there a project to run *insert some os here* apps on Linux?

Isn't it better for open source developers to spend their time making new and better open source applications? For example, Gimp is a wonderful tool and I'm glad the developers wrote it instead of looking for some hack way of making Photoshop run on Linux.

If you still need the OS X apps, look into making a dual boot system or get your hands on Vmware.

What Mac software did you want to run on Linux?

[OrangeTide]

If you have some software in mind that is Mac-only that you wish to run on Linux that could be a motivator for creating an OSX layer ontop of Linux (might be easier to do it on FreeBSD really).

Once you sort out Mach binaries, and support Mach system calls, then put together the Darwin mach services you need. You could probably begin to emulate the platform from the ground up. Or you could just go for the library level and just try to catch ObjC/C calls and turn them into X11 straight away. And deal with few if any mach messages or system calls directly.

DIY

[Anonymous Coward]

Does such a project exist yet? If not, why not?

If this is so important to you, go to sourceforge and start implementing what you want. One thing I hate about the opensource community. there are about 2% actually contributing and 98% sitting on the sideline wanting something.

Re:Why?

[urbaneassault]

All valid points, maybe this will help.

1. Very true, but Apple is a hardware company first and foremost (and most people feel that it's their strongest area). You can't buy a Mac and expect to slap in the latest nVidia and have it work out of the box. Hopefully this changes as time goes on.
2. Fink fink and more fink. Check out the Fink Project if you haven't already. It will allow you almost all the flexibility you need from point #2. The only real setback is that you can't boot into KDE or Gnome, but you can run it in an X window.
3. I'm with you here - OS X security and a Unix core brought me to Apple, and their response to a real issue pissed me off. Again, as market share grows, let's hope this trend reverses.
4. Fink again, if you don't want to go the VM route. Also, Eclipse is most certainly available in OS X (use it daily).
5. You're right, this is a preference thing. I spent my entire life on Windows and Linux, hating Apple. Then 10.2 came out, and I couldn't imagine working as productively in another environment again. It's a mind shift away from Linux DMs, and if that flexibility is necessary, you'll find OS X a pain to work around.

Why?

[slartibart]

No, there's no way to do it, I can tell you that without even googling it, because it's such a stupid idea that no one with the ability to write such an emulator would ever do it. Wine exists to replace the worst part of the windows experience - the OS, while keeping the best part (compatible apps). You're paying extra for OS X (the nice thing about the mac experience) and then throwing it away. For what? To run Mac apps, which aren't compatible with what the rest of the world uses in the first place. Waste of money - just buy some generic hardware if you're going to run linux, and run wine if Linux apps aren't enough.

Re:Why?

[soft_guy]

I can think of several reasons and to ask this is similar to asking why anyone would want WINE when they could run Linux inside a window on a XP based PC. For one thing, maybe you want to run a Mac application on non-Apple hardware.

This was an idea/pet project from my LinuxPPC days

[haaz]

Back in the day (Q4 2000) I proposed having an environment for OS X apps to on LinuxPPC. (At the time, Macs were PowerPC-based.) Reviewing the plans for OS X, we saw two major components would run atop the microkernel, the native OS X environment, "Blue Box", and a Mac OS 9.x compatibility engine called "Yellow Box." If this was possible, why not do something similar for LinuxPPC?

So one night, I diagrammed "Green Box" on a bar napkin. This would be the layer atop the Linux kernel (we were at 2.2, I think) that would fool OS X into thinking it was in charge of the Mac. Hypothetically, this would work, as it was already running on the microkernel and had an innate flexibility -- at least on top of the microkernel. (Insert rants decrying microkernel's performance hit, superiority of monolithic builds, etc.)

As I was more of an Ideas Man, community builder, media whore, and recovering from that car crash, I showed and discussed the napkin with jcarr and a few of our programmers.

Because this was the last project I proposed in the months before I resigned, it never went anywhere despite having very high level contacts at Apple. The rest (mv linuxppcinc /dev/null) is more or less unwritten history.

You gotten modded up for points 1 and 2...

[beetle496]

...and your point 4 is funny, so that's okay.

Most people who buy a Mac are even less inclined to tinker than a typical Windows user

Wrong. AppleScript, xCode, and pList files invite tinkering. And one is much less likely to seriously break things. But if a typical Mac user is twice as likely to tinker, there are still ten times fewer of them in aggregate, so I understand why you might get the wrong impression.

and therefore much less likely to switch to Linux

Wrong. Mac users are much less likely to switch to Linux because: (1) they bought good quality hardware stays useable years longer than the typical windows boxen (no need to string out product life by switching); and (2) OS X is much nicer than Windows. Plus there is the same numerical illiteracy aspect of the first half your bullet. (If OS X users were twice as likely to switch to Linux as compared to Windows users, there would still only be a tenth of them in aggregate.)

Unless you're cheap

[Mike Savior]

Why not just get parallels and run your linux install with it in coherence? Problem solved?

Re:Unless you're cheap

[bot24]

There is no coherence mode for Linux, but you can use X11 to achieve a similar effect.

Re:Why?

[tm2b]

OSX software is great. However, Linux offers me a great deal more choice, and that choice tends to be much more configurable to my needs.

Uh, what? Name some software (other than MythTV) that runs on Linux and not on Mac OS X. Usually it's just a download of a different version and running under the (Apple-supplied) X Server.

Re:Why?

[Guy Harris]

Most likely derived from FreeBSD's libc, in fact.

Yes, most of it is derived from FreeBSD's libc, although not all the stuff comes from FreeBSD (the memory allocator is Apple's own, and the get*by* routines talk to a daemon via Mach messages rather than going through a name service switch to routines that directly read files or talk to servers, for example). It is most definitely NOT GNU libc (heck, it's not even called "libc", it's called "libSystem" - but it has the same role that the library called "libc" on other UN*Xes has).

Emulator name?

[Astadar]

If WINdows Emulator = Wine, would that make OS X Emulator = OSXE (read: oh, sexy)?

Re:Emulator name?

[Anonymous Coward]

WINE = Wine Is *Not* an Emulator

Re:Emulator name?

[amigabill]

Nah. WINE = Wine Is Not an Emulator.

How about this? MINE = Mine Is Not an Emulator? (M for Mac)

Re:Emulator name?

[Tarlus]

Either that, or MacE (Mac Emulator, read: 'mace').

Like Amarok?

[hummassa]

AFAICT it can stream other people's shared iTunes Libraries over a network...

Re:Like Amarok?

[Tim_UWA]

Even the with latest iTunes? I admit I haven't tried in quite a while, I was under the impression the encryption wasn't cracked.

FOSS iPod Restore Tool

[hummassa]

like dd?

dd if=/dev/sdc2 | gzip > ipodbackup.img.gz

and

zcat ipodbackup.img.gz | dd of=/dev/sdc2

Re:FOSS iPod Restore Tool

[mrchaotica]

Great idea if you either:

• run it on a factory-new iPod, where all the bitz on the hard drive other than the ones holding the OS are zeroed, or
• want a backup image possibly of an equal size to the capacity of the iPod itself (e.g. if all the "free space" is random bits), which would suck for a 30GB or larger model.

Re:FOSS iPod Restore Tool

[dnamaners]

Ok, then (note, you will need a newer kernel than can mount HFS+ RW, depend on ipod model);

Blank the free space before you backup then,

mount -t hpfs -o rw /dev/sdc2 /mnt/ipod
dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/ipod/blank.file
rm /mnt/ipod/blank.file
umount /dev/sdc2
then backup with dd:

dd if=/dev/sdc2 | gzip > ipodbackup.img.gz
or if you want to backup the firmware too:

dd if=/dev/sdc | gzip > ipodbackup.img.gz
For some more detailed info on ipod and linux things ...
http://pag.csail.mit.edu/~adonovan/hacks/ipod.html

Don't forget to backup the firmware too /dev/sd1, you may need it. Generally I take an "empty" backup of a virgin fully zeroed device with no files, firmware and partition structure and all, then I can do a simple factory restore. If you don't have a new device it trivial to make one. Just mount it, copy off your tunes to the hdd, zero the free space on the second partition. Unmount it, then take the image of the ipod and you are set for a Linux based restore. What was said before was essentially right, dd is the way. Put a few of these sorts of commands (tweaked for your personal settings) in a bash script, and add a shortcut to your desktop or a menu, now its easy too.

Re:Why?

[AnObfuscator]

Thanks for the reply

1. Right, they are a hardware company whose "value adds" are industrial design and a unique software offering. Unfortunately, when they don't offer a hardware product in a category you need, you're SOL for OS X. That's why I would prefer to migrate to a more portable OS.

2. & 4. Fink is great. I love APT on Debian/Ubuntu. great stuff. However, X11 apps on OS X tend to suck, don't you think? They really don't integrate well into the environment, and performance is 2nd rate. That's improved massively since Apple's first X offering, but it still has a way to go. As to Eclipse on OSX, yeah, I use it daily, as well. Great piece of software. :) However, I was referring to a specific Eclipse *plugin* that VMWare offers with its VMWare Workstation product, which is not offered for OSX. As far as I can tell, that specific functionality is now available in VMWare fusion. I sent them an email recently asking them to clarify, but haven't heard back yet.

3. I hope it does, too, but Apple seems to treat security as a marketing buzzword, not a technology issue. OSX may have to take a bad fall for Apple to change its direction. I hope not.

5. Ha, I've traversed the opposite path. I've used Apple since my first computer in 1988. I have had over a half-dozen Macs since then. I hated Windows, Gnome, KDE, CDE, etc passionately. I still hate Windows, but I've come to appreciate the flexibility of Gnome & KDE.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fink sucks compared to package management on Linux or a real BSD. It doesn't see nearly as much development, the repositories don't contain even close to the same number of working packages as the Linux and BSD repositories, and the packages are often really outdated. Furthermore, Apple's X implementation is very buggy.

Re:Of course you can't

[fd0man]

The GPL is about *granting* choices in the marketplace. One must really hide under a rock pretty hard to see that. Through the power of the GPL, I am able to play certain games that I really like, on Linux. Incidentally, these games are about the only proprietary software I use other than some things that are (currently) necessary for browsing on the web. And believe you me, when free implementations of all of those things are available, I will switch to them.

You seem to forget that many users are not like Richard Stallman. While I admire his conviction, he has little choice of his own at this point. He is such a die-hard for free software that there are many things that he will simply not use. I do not share his strict code, but I do share his ideas. That said, I won't shun a piece of software because it is proprietary--I will only shun a piece of proprietary software that I don't need, or that there is a free replacement for. And I dislike OS X for being proprietary just as much as Windows.

Steve Jobs, if I recall correctly, said that he wants things like DRM to go away. Well, that's pretty cool. Why not increase the available choices for everyone else and make it such that OS X becomes free? Many of Apple's customers will still pay for the operating system, I'm sure. If it were free software, I'd pay for it in one way or another. You see, it's not about screwing people like Apple or Microsoft, though compatibility layers can sometimes have that effect on a company if they are good enough.

Re:Why?

[brunascle]

iptables :)

Re:Why?

[sgtrock]

I know a lot of people disagree with this, but I find a lot of OSX's UI broken, at least for how I use my system. I find the window management to be frustrating, the Dock to be very limited, and the lack of decent app launching & management to be very frustrating

THANK YOU! I was beginning to think that a buddy of mine and I were the only two people didn't like OS/X's UI. Apple's UI design decisions have driven me crazy since the first time I sat down at the keyboard of an original Mac.

To any Mac fans still reading this deep in the thread, I don't mean this as a slam of your beloved Apple. I just don't like the UI and therefore choose another platform for my personal use. Before Dell announced their Linux program I was recommending Macs for most people who asked me what to buy.

Re:Why?

[Anaerin]

Erm... MythTV runs on OSX: http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Myth_on_Mac_O S_X

Most of these guys are full of crap

[Anonymous Coward]

Like subject says, most of these guys are full of crap. I've run OSX and Ubuntu 7.04 on the same machine, and Ubuntu is FAR faster, even with beryl turned on (giving it jiggly windows, semi-transparent, etc. OSX-style.) It'll run with less RAM too. If I got a Mac I would certainly run Linux on it. It's not pointless, and it's not giving up a Mercedes for a rebuilt Chevy.. if an OSX user hasn't tried it, Ubuntu is NICE, and can be tried out off a LiveCD (although, since it's a CD, you won't see the full speed of it that way.)

          As for why there isn't an OSX emulator:
          Complication.

          Carbon, Cocoa, etc. DON'T all run on a BSD kernel. There's the Mach microkernel, with a BSD personality sitting on top of that. But, Carbon & Cocoa to more or less extent interact with both the Mach and BSD layers.. It's relatively easy to map BSD system calls to equivalent Linux ones with very low overhead. But Mach? It doesn't really map well without a thick shim of some type. Additionally, Linux doesn't support Mach-O file format, and this may be complicated.

          Cocoa is Nextstep-like, and there's a (nearly?) full emulation of it around.. designed as a Nextstep simulation, but has kept up with the Cocoa developments. Porting Cocoa apps from source is apparently not too bad. But, binaries? I don't know.

          Carbon is OS9-based, and I don't know of any OS9 emulator around to even start working on a runtime system off of.. there's emulators that will emulate an entire PowerPC or Mac68k mac and run OS9 *ON* it, but the only OS9-like system I ever even heard of for porting purposes, let alone native execution, was Executor by ARDI.. which is commercial and closed source.

          Then, there's "classic" apps -- uncommon, but this would involve a full OS9 simulation, and be an added complication.

          Then there's the "OTHER" apps. Java, no big deal -- there's JVMs for Linux. BSD on X, this is the easy case and may already work.. but if the app tries to check permissions too closely, it may not see what it wants -- Macs use NetINFO (inherited from NextSTEP) and basically nobody else does -- they use PAM or a straight-up password file.

          Based on what I've read, I think almost all of this would have to be working before much above a "hello world" app would start up. It's a major undertaking; Apple's tendency to be lawyer-happy is probably slowing it down too.

OS X on Linux

[FreeBSD evangelist]

Do it the other way around. Keep OS X as your host operating system, and then run Linux in a virtual machine. There are several virtual solutions out there, some free, some not.

I use Parallels, which can (and has, in my use) host Solaris, Linux, FreeBSD, and yes, even Windows.

Maybe it's time to relearn your lessons..

[Anonymous Coward]

You *really* should revise your thoughts, specially if you want to blend in here at slashdot.
Begin with the credo:

http://www.thinkmac.net/web-links/apple/apple-fanb oy-credo-kantor-com

With apologies to Robert Frost

[LarsG]

Does such a project exist yet? If not, why not?

When you take the road less traveled,
don't complain about being lonely.

Re:Why?

[alderX]

You are not alone, I also can't get used to the OS X UI - even though I tried hard.

My OS history is DOS (Home) -> OS/2 (Work & Home) -> Linux (Work & Home) -> Windows (Work). End of last year I bought an Mac Mini as it was the best packaging I could fine for my need (an silent small desktop with DVI adapter). I first had a look at a custom made Via board based system (passively cooled), but then you also should have a silent power supply etc. and so finally going for the Mac Mini was just less hazzle.

The bonus also was that I could give Mac OS X a try - given I was kind of borred by tinkering with Linux. But I just couldn't stand the UI and some of the application shortcomings like:
  o Alt+Tab / Alt+~ - Why do I have to think about if I want to switch between two applications or two instances of the same application? I often have two Terminals and one Web Browser open - with OS/2, Windows, Linux that all no issue, but with Mac OS it gets really disturbing. I found some tool that is supposed to mimic the wanted behaviour (can't remember the name), but it often got the order wrong.
  o Rename files - You can do anything with the context menu on a file. Also the menu of the Finder contains a lot of options, but you can't rename a file. Why is this? Googling for it I found the (ment to be) intuitive thing with clicking the file once and then clicking on the text. Oh well...
  o Maximize windows - When maximizing a window it still doesn't get maximed to something which looks like fullscreen. It gets only maximized till the point where one dimension hits the limit and then stops there. Where is the point in this?
  o Terminal - I haven't found a really reasonable UI yet. They are all very primitive and unfortunately is the regular Terminal.app still the "best" one arround. But don't try to compare it to Putty for instance.
  o ...

So overall I really can't understand why Mac OS is perceived as the holy grail of UI's. IMHO an up to date KDE does a better - except maybe of the Icon art. But hey I anyway want to get work done.

Re:Why?

[Pausanias]

Really? Where do you get the version built against 7.2? I couldn't find it anywhere. The default download has the older version linked against 4.3: http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/x11formacos x.html

Install Apple's X11 (there's a version built against 7.2, which is much better than the stock version from Apple).

Useful for others

[amigabill]

I think this would be great. Not because I want to run OSX software on Linux, but because I want an open-source thing like this that could be ported elsewhere. I'm an Amiga fan. AmigaOS currently runs on PowerPC. I'd love to be able to run some of that PowerPC MacOSX software out there on AmigaOS. So an open-sourced Mac API wrapper for Linux comparable to Wine I think would be a cool thing.

Currently I run my OSX software on my iBook using OSX.I'm still a little bit sane. :)

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

"It simply can't be done."

Unless you use SuperDuper, according to the same article you quoted, and it works perfectly, according to the article you quoted.

I'm thinking RTFA applies here...

Einstein places his order with a question

[polyex]

To the original poster - Why not start this 'project' your self? If you are deftly switching operating systems , you are obviously a computer 'expert' doing important works. The fact that your post qualifies as 'news' on Slashdot is evidence that you continue to innovate and push mankind forward with your brilliant ideas that no one would dare even dream of before you opened our eyes. I find it hard to believe that you can not code something like this in your own free-time. Programming is so easy and you can get programmers to work cheap from India to help. Perhaps they will have to write it in Visual Basic, but who cares if it works 'pretty good' anyway? Best of luck and its a pleasure to see that Slashdot is keeping the bar so high.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's command, not alt.

Command-tilde is different from command-tab because you're not running two instances of the same program, you're running one and it has multiple windows open.

Rename files - What's intuitive about contextual menus? The answer is nothing. You're used to it but it's hardly obvious to somebody who knows nothing about computers that right clicking should do something different, or that it's where one should look to rename a file.

Maximize windows - The Mac UI is oriented towards displaying smaller windows side by side rather than having any single window take over the whole screen. Many people find the MS Windows model (copied by OS/2 and Linux) of applications designed to take over the whole screen annoying, because trying to work with smaller windows side by side is often broken in subtle or not so subtle ways. You're fully acclimated to fullscreening, though, and therefore you think the other way is bad.

Do you sense a pattern here? Everything you're objecting to boils down to complaining that it's not the same as what you're familiar with. Which is fine, having a preference for one is great, but it's not the same as the other actually being unintuitive or bad. It only feels unintuitive to you because you originally learned something else and internalized that into all your expectations about how a GUI should behave. To some (myself included) the general design of MS Windows (which is what all the operating systems you mentioned being familiar with were modeled on) is what feels clunky and unintuitive, because if you learned on the Mac you're used to something else.

Why?

[Bill_the_Engineer]

The question I must ask is - WHY?

The effort to run Linux programs on OS X is minuscule, while the effort to run OS X on Linux would be a major undertaking with few (if any) real returns on the investment.

I use OS X at home and Linux at work, and have no problems bringing my work home..

The only reason that I could see for a project like this would be to run OS X programs on non-apple hardware. I wouldn't care much for this, since (1) there isn't really that many "must have" applications that is OS-X only (and not part of the OS itself) and (2) why create tension with Apple if there really nothing much to gain.

Re:Why?

[TheRaven64]

Really? Where do you get the version built against 7.2? I couldn't find it anywhere. The default download has the older version linked against 4.3: http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/x11formacos x.html From here:

http://people.freedesktop.org/~bbyer/

I think I'm missing something

[Anonymous Coward]

You're telling me there are apps for Mac?!

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

That says that it's frontend only? That won't get you far.

Re:Why?

[wiredlogic]

3. Security
OSX is pretty good, but I'm a little worried at Apple's highly negative response to security concerns (anyone remember the wireless driver exploit fiasco?).

I wouldn't worry too much about security failures. Macs are little fish in a big pond of vulnerable Windows machines. Even if an exploit does make it out in the wild, there is not much incentive for the virus writers to capitalize on it. Most of the action now is in botnets and it is too difficult for an infected OSX machine to find another OSX machine to infect. The growth rate would be too small to be worthwhile.

What's The Potential Userbase? 5 Geeks, 9 Minutes?

[mgbastard]

Other than, a huh! it works! moment- what practical value would that have? To free you from buying Apple hardware to execute closed-source run mac apps?

Re:Why?

[minniger]

You're having a context switching issues...

Work on a mac for 4 years like me and then try and use windows or linux. It's painful how haphazard and unrefined those UIs are, but I wouldn't ding them just for doing things the way they normally do them. (I would ding them for having endlessly nested dialogs for example).

Each of your issues is really more of an 'i don't like it' as opposed to 'the ui is horribly broken':

1. Only use the alt-tab (really command-tab)... There is only ONE instance of each app, then each app can have multiple 'document' windows. Tab needs to handle both.

2. Click one and hit return, edit name. Yeah, it's goofy, but the mac has done it that way forever...

3. OS X assumes you have multiple apps with multiple windows all going at the same time so you don't run things in full screen mode (cause then you'd have to alt-tab). Windows assumes you close an app to open another. Therefore full screen make more sense. Linux (KDE/Gnome) can run multiple apps, but has been built like windows. On large monitors those green + buttons do work nicely. Web browsers max out their height but don't set their width to 20+ inches.

4. You haven't tried looking very hard have you? Still, my os x term works about as well as any gnome or kde term i've used.. some how I mange to live with out tabs.

There are issues with the mac GUI to be sure... but the ones you have outlined are not really in that list.

Re:Why?

[Pausanias]

Thanks for the info. I'm attaching the readme that came with the package installer. I was really hoping that this would include a new and better quartz-wm, but it looks like we're stuck with the old one. Can you clue me in as to why this update is better than the default Apple X11 install (aside from niceties of interest to developers only)?

This package is a partial distribution of the X.org X11R7.2 release, built as a Universal package. It should run on any system running Mac OS X Tiger (10.4) or later. Please note that this is an experimental package, and has some features missing and also probably some bugs, but it's usable on a day-to-day basis. As such, it is mainly intended for developers who want to be able to work on parts of X without having to rebuild the whole thing. If it breaks, you get to keep both pieces. Please send any patches to x11app@bbyer.mm.st. The directory /usr/X11 will be created, and all files will be installed in that directory. This package contains all of the header files, libraries, fonts, the Xquartz server, and a new version of X11.app, located at /usr/X11/X11.app. Note that this does not (yet) contain any user applications (xterm, etc.), nor does it contain quartz-wm, so most users should also install Apple's X11User.pkg before proceeding. The latest version of this package, as well as the sources used to build it, may be found at http://people.freedesktop.org/~bbyer/.

Re:Mac on Linux on PPC yes, Intel? Nope Won't Work

[Anthony Baby]

Thanks for the response. My iMac uses an NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT. I need audio to work, and I need the interal iSight camera to work as well. I have seen a few HOWTOs on getting Ubuntu working on a MacBook. Sleep was brought up in a few places as being spotty. There was also some talk about Airport support and Airport Extreme support having issues as well.

My theory so far... if a MacBook can run Linux fine albiet with some hiccups, then an new gen iMac can as well. And sure enough, there are pictures here.

But yes, this is the nature of depending on proprietary software for a closed system. Honestly though, this wasn't any different from the headaches I had trying to get Linux on my old HP PC and supporting all the freaking DirectX and WDM-based video equipment I had. Can someone recommend a current generation personal computer that was *made* just for Linux, PPC preferably, and that isn't totally spartan. ;-)

FreeBSD and redbox

[Anonymous Coward]

Back in 'the day' when Apple had just bought NeXT, there were people who were running (Some) solaris X86 binaries under FreeBSD by the same set of hooks used to run GNU/Linux binaries. Another gent did the same with NeXT and posted some links.

I was able to get ls and grep from the developer alpha of MacOSX (RedBox) to work under FreeBSD. But Apple killed redbox (and the Newton) before I could care enough to actually spend "real time" into making RedBox to work on FreeBSD.

If you were going to try this, FreeBSD on a Mac + the GNU/Linux hooks would be a good starting point.

A tablet that runs OS X

[GPS Pilot]

I would like to run this on a tablet or a PDA, but Apple don't make such devices

Apple doesn't make them, but they're available: ModBook http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/ModBook

OK, point by point:

[whjwhj]

OK, point by point:

1. Portability
What, specifically, is gained by having a choice of hardware? You mentioned graphics cards. What, specifically, is gained by having a choice of graphics cards? I mean it! For 99.9998% if the population Apple offers hardware sufficient to their needs. Including graphics cards.

2. Flexibility
You admit that this is something that '90%' (I like my 99.9998% better) of folks don't care about, which is good because it reveals that you have at least some perspective. But you talk about having to recompile the kernel to suit your "needs". What "needs" are these? I'm not talking about "wants" or "would be cools", I'm talking about absolute, couldn't get it done any other way "needs". And, assuming you've got real "needs", do they balance against the time and headaches required to achieve them?

3. Security
You admit OS X is pretty good. Again, there's hope for you. It would be wrong to suggest that Apple's response to security has been 'negative' (although sometimes it's rather 'quiet') but the proof of the pudding is in the numbers. Which system experiences the fewest real, active and exploited security issues? OS X to be sure. (Although neither is the train wreck that is Windows.)

4. Software Ecosystem
You are correct that there is a staggering amount of 'choice' when it comes to Linux software. I can choose between any number of poorly-designed, inconsistent, and inadequately tested Linux apps. Particularly editors. (And they are all so EASY to install!!!) OS X, by contrast, offers a very good selection of well-designed, consistent, usable applications suitable, again, for 99.9998% of all user's needs.

5. Usability
You said "I know a lot of people disagree with this" and you're right. A lot of people do. For good reason. One good way to measure usability is the "grandma test". Which system do you think grandma is going to have an easier time with? Enough said.

I couldn't help but notice the lack of the word "Dependability" on your list. Which system is most likely to "just work"? OS X, of course.

> Isn't freedom of choice a great feeling?

I wish people's ideology wouldn't get mixed up with reality. So many Linux types get so hung up on the grand glorious vision of Linux that they fail to acknowledge it's significant tangible shortcomings.

Re:OK, point by point:

[toddestan]

What, specifically, is gained by having a choice of hardware? You mentioned graphics cards. What, specifically, is gained by having a choice of graphics cards? I mean it! For 99.9998% if the population Apple offers hardware sufficient to their needs. Including graphics cards.

Are you kidding? The Mac Mini is too limited and underpowered. The iMac is too limited. The Mac Pro is simply too expensive. Sure, I do realize I'm not the majority, but more than 1/500,000 feel this way.

You admit that this is something that '90%' (I like my 99.9998% better) of folks don't care about, which is good because it reveals that you have at least some perspective. But you talk about having to recompile the kernel to suit your "needs". What "needs" are these? I'm not talking about "wants" or "would be cools", I'm talking about absolute, couldn't get it done any other way "needs". And, assuming you've got real "needs", do they balance against the time and headaches required to achieve them?

That's a stupid argument if I've ever heard one. I'm sure I could get by on a stock install of Windows Vista. I'm sure you could too. Why do you "need" OSX anyway?

You are correct that there is a staggering amount of 'choice' when it comes to Linux software. I can choose between any number of poorly-designed, inconsistent, and inadequately tested Linux apps. Particularly editors. (And they are all so EASY to install!!!) OS X, by contrast, offers a very good selection of well-designed, consistent, usable applications suitable, again, for 99.9998% of all user's needs.

Which is why you NEVER see anything like Firefox, Camino, VLC, or Handbrake installed on a Mac, cause who needs them? You're an idiot.

You said "I know a lot of people disagree with this" and you're right. A lot of people do. For good reason. One good way to measure usability is the "grandma test". Which system do you think grandma is going to have an easier time with? Enough said.

You Apple fanboys are hilarious. Just because a system works well for Grandma doesn't mean that everyone else wants to use it. Here's a computer that rates so high on the usability scale, that a 3 year old can use it. I don't see people pitching out their Macs in order to use this pinnacle of user interface design though.

Re:OK, point by point:

[whjwhj]

> Which is why you NEVER see anything like Firefox, Camino, VLC, or Handbrake installed on a Mac, cause who needs them?

Indeed, who does? Safari is a capable web browser, Quicktime and Flash do just fine with video, and Handbrake is used exclusively by thieves. Again, 99.9998% of folks don't need those apps!

> You're an idiot

Wow, really digging for the high-brow intellectual argument, huh?

Re:OK, point by point:

[toddestan]

Indeed, who does? Safari is a capable web browser, Quicktime and Flash do just fine with video, and Handbrake is used exclusively by thieves. Again, 99.9998% of folks don't need those apps!

A lot of Mac users would disagree, given what they have installed on their machines. And besides, last time I checked Flash player wasn't an Apple product either.

Re:OK, point by point:

[whjwhj]

I'm guessing at least 99% of Mac users haven't bothered to download another web browser. Why would they? I'd say a decent percentage aren't even aware that downloading another web browser is even an option. I worked with end users for 4 1/2 years and people don't mess with stuff like that unless they absolutely have to. I use Firefox, btw, because it has web development plugins that I find very useful. But, again, 99% just don't care. Safari use is roughly equal to Mac market share, which proves my point.

Now, the whole "Flash player wasn't an Apple product" angle is interesting. Because the same can be said of Linux. Linux is just the kernel, after all. Linux distros frequently ship with a ton of (partially complete, inconsistent, largely undocumented) OSS apps, but very few if any could be called a "Linux" product. If that's the way your going to measure things then Macs ship with way more Apple software than Linux ships with "Linux" software. It's probably better to measure things based on the availability of compatible software for the platform, not with what ships with it.

Re:OK, point by point:

[toddestan]

I'm guessing at least 99% of Mac users haven't bothered to download another web browser. Why would they? I'd say a decent percentage aren't even aware that downloading another web browser is even an option. I worked with end users for 4 1/2 years and people don't mess with stuff like that unless they absolutely have to. I use Firefox, btw, because it has web development plugins that I find very useful. But, again, 99% just don't care. Safari use is roughly equal to Mac market share, which proves my point.

According to w3, Safari has about 1.3% of hits, while OSX has 4.0% of hits. That puts Safari at about 1 out of 3 Mac users (I'll just assume that Safari for Windows is at 0% because it sucks and 99% of Windows users don't download another browser anyway, right?). From my informal observations, this would seem to be about in the ballpark, as I've noticed a bit more than half use Firefox, most of the rest Safari, a small amount use Camino or the Mozilla suite, and a few oddballs use Opera and the others.

Re:OK, point by point:

[whjwhj]

w3's values are not indicative. From their website:

> our data, collected from W3Schools' log-files over five years,

From W3Schools' log files? It would appear that only a small percentage of Safari users visit W3School's website. Which seems logical.

Here's some more reliable numbers, widely reported in the tech media the last few months:

http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid= 0

From their site:

> The sample size for these sites is more than 40,000 urls and growing

vs, ummmm let's see (counts with fingers) .... ONE for W3Schools.

This shows Safari holding at 4.49%, which is in line with the Mac platform's market share of about 3.5%. Linux market share, btw, is 0.7%. Which is entirely understandable. (Their share at W3Schools is rather high. Apparently a lot of Linux users are busy learning HTML.)

As you noted Safari does run on Windows. And you're right, Windows DOES suck!

Re:OK, point by point:

[toddestan]

This shows Safari holding at 4.49%, which is in line with the Mac platform's market share of about 3.5%. Linux market share, btw, is 0.7%. Which is entirely understandable. (Their share at W3Schools is rather high. Apparently a lot of Linux users are busy learning HTML.)

Even so, 3.5/4.5 ~= 78%, that's a far cry from 99% like you were claiming.

Re:OK, point by point:

[whjwhj]

Are you stoned? Safari market share 4.5% and the Mac's is 3.5%. Safari is HIGHER, my friend. It means that virtually all Mac users are using Safari.

Are we through here?

Re:OK, point by point:

[toddestan]

Actually, I gave the wrong numbers, but I'm close. If you go to your own link, it would appear that for whatever reason they count PPC Macs and Intel Macs as seperate, the combined total for OSX is 6%, while Safari holds 4.5%, so ~75%.

Re:OK, point by point:

[whjwhj]

The page I found is:

http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid= 2

which just clumps OS X at 3.5%. Which page are you talking about?

Re:OK, point by point:

[toddestan]

The exact one you linked to. Take a look at the line directly under the one you quote that says "MacIntel".

Re:OK, point by point:

[whjwhj]

Well! I knew if we dug long enough you'd be accurate about SOMETHING! ;)

btw unfortunately I'm sure a decent percentage of those macs are using IE. Ancient Bondi Blue G3 iMacs running system 9. Plenty of grandmas still using them. Safari didn't even exist yet.

Better off replacing your arms with coat hangers

[gig]

Mac OS X exists to run Mac apps. There is a philosophy behind it that says build a capability into the machine, such as a multichannel pro audio system, and then that capability belongs to the user, and developers can exploit it on behalf of the user. If you try to run Mac OS X apps on another system you will be limited at best to those that are very similar to the ones the other system already has. So no problem running Firefox, but how are you going to run Photoshop without color management? There are all these system tools that just aren't there on Linux yet.

What's worse is that with virtualization being so mature you can run Linux or Windows on the Mac Desktop anyway. Takes an hour to set up and costs $50 and everything works.
Or maybe you're a Linux fanboy who doesn't use the computer as a tool but more like a T-shirt with a gnu on it. In that case, never mind.

99% is enough reason to switch

[lullabud]

If 99% of what you're doing in OS X is a pain in the ass, that's plenty of justification to switch to Linux.

Re:Why?

[Anthony Baby]

I exlained elsewhere in the thread, but since you asked directly: Mac OS X is fine except that on my Core 2 Duo has been very flaky. The same tasks (video and audio work) performed on my PowerPC go without a hitch. This leads me to believe it's not Mac OS X generally, but something about its implementation on x86. I know I am not the only one to notice a problem with Finder getting bogged down. Leopard will probably fix this when it comes out.

Like any Linux user my first thought was "How can I use Linux to improve my computing experience with this piece of electronics?" Specifically, "Can I run Linux so that I can run my applications and get my work done without a single errant program like Finder taking down the entire machine?" You no doubt get this, but others should understand that in this era, The Macintosh computer is no more locked to Mac OS X than a Dell/Gateway/HP with its craptacular windows-only hardware is locked to Windows.

I would have been better off asking about an alternative to Finder. That way I wouldn't have so many people challenging the sensibility of putting Linux on a Macintosh in the first place when I could do it on a $400 PC. This is not directly to you, but had I asked about running Linux on the PSP so that I could run GBA games, I would have gotten less critcism. Sheeesh.

Re:Of course you can't

[Hucko]

But it was easy to use! The reboot button came up in the middle of the screen and was always on top!

OS X side-by-side with Linux using KVM

[kinema]

- QEMU is a fast and open source emulator that can be used to emulate, among others, x86 PCs, AMD64 PCs, and Power Macs. This should allow you to run OS X as a guest OS. If you use QEMU to emulate an x86 on an x86, or an x86 or AMD64 on AMD64, it should run close to native speed. That is, as far as the CPU is concerned. Other hardware, graphics hardware in particular, will not have native performance.

An even better option here would be to use KVM (which in turn uses QEMU) on Linux to run OS X in a virtual machine. There are questions about the legality of this approach because if I remember correctly OS X's license specifically forbids running it in a virtualized environment. Also I believe that QEMU is missing some features required to host OS X.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry I'm AC - I rarely post to /. so I've never bothered to create an account.

Have you thought about running X11 "rooted" (I guess is the word) vs. "rootless"?

Back before Apple released their version of X11 you had to compile it for OS X (I think this was around OS X 10.2).

Anyway - you could run Gnome/KDE/whatever you want in X11 and not see Finder running in the background. The obvious downside is the wasted resources by Finder - however - this would also allow you to "jump" back and forth between a full GNOME/KDE desktop and Finder/Mac Apps.

I must say I've got 3 Macs (2 powerpc, 1 intel) and I've used other models for work, etc - I've never had a great deal of problem with Finder. It's crashed occasionally, but it's better than the stability I've had on linux. ...maybe try a clean reload of OS X before you waste a lot of time trying to reinvent the wheel.

Dear Mod

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not insightful. In everything from publishing the OpenStep standard to creating and maintaining the Objective-C interface for gcc, Apple has acted in good faith, relatively speaking. The charge that Apple is threatening in anyway to stop this emulator from happening is a ridiculous accusation. Please don't be such a frickin' idiot.

Re:Of course you can't

[Anonymous Coward]

Fool, read the label next time! :) That's a can of TrollAttract! What are you doing with that, anyway? Our troll must have smelled the can in your hand and come running. Be careful -- he'll probably try to mount you before he leaves. You can resist if you want (I would!) because it is not at all an enjoyable experience. However, according to wikipedia if you let him succeed it'll be over in a second anyway. You'll just end up with his sweat on you and stinking of KFC for a few hours. (For some reason, the KFC link went to the Kenya Film Commission. I assume the person meant Kentucky Fried Chicken, so I corrected the article. I'm a wikipedia editor now, hurhur!)

Simply

[hotfireball]

They are Carbon. They are Cocoa. They are universal binaries. They are PPC code with Altivec. Does such a project exist yet? If not, why not?

I am not sure, but in my opinion the reason is:

1. Cocoa is proprietary.
2. Carbon is proprietary too and it is old thus must die ASAP.
3. You can do exactly the opposite in MacOSX: running Linux apps on OSX instead of running OSX apps on Linux. Well, actually not exactly, but ported/recompiled to Darwin/X11. Ant it is cheaper: recently cross-platform code considered Good Thing.
4. MacOSX has frameworks for applications and differs much from Linux/Unix/BSD.

Maybe some more reasons exists...

Re:Why?

[jessecurry]

Thanks for the reply :)

One thing that you may find helpful if you are having trouble with the finder is the "Quit Finder" feature that can be enabled with the help of some third party tools. I believe that it is still functional in the latest release of OS X, although I do not make use of it personally. I semi-decent write up can be found here/

Otherwise, running OS X binaries on a Linux Machine will be next to impossible with any current software, although the pulse of the Mac OS X development community hints at the Cocoa Libraries being moved to Windows(and possibly Linux) by Apple, which would enable any independent software developers to "write once, compile anywhere" using the cocoa frameworks.

All the time in the world

[zussal]

Yet another problem for the person with all the time in the world to waste.

Re:Why?

[Anthony Baby]

Thanks for the link. A "Quit Finder" option might prove useful. As it is now, I've learned to keep a terminal open and sometimes Activity Monitor. I use Terminal.app heavily anyway, and issuing a 'kill' always works. There is a Mac-on-Linux virtualization project but it requires PowerPC. I'll just have to wait patiently to see what Leopard brings.

Fink sucks.

[SanityInAnarchy]

And there really isn't a better option for a package manager on OS X.

I suppose you could run some sort of Gentoo in a chroot or something, but who knows how long it would last...

"Optimized drivers" my ass. Linux frequently has drivers that are as good or better than Windows, and I imagine the same is true for Linux vs OS X.

But really... If you only need those one or two apps on OS X, why not run a "just works" Linux (like Ubuntu, Kubuntu) and virtualize OS X?

Re:Why?

[alderX]

I agree that it's a context switch issue.

But that also the point - I can context switch between my work laptop (Windows XP) and my home Mac Mini (KDE/Debian Linux) just fine. The only think I'am missing is a Norton Commander clone as good as Total Commander, but that's a different topic. Same was true when I was using OS/2 back then. So I can easily switch between all three (or Gnome etc.), but not with Mac OS X. Sure I might "retrain" myself to go along with Mac OS X but that only makes sense if I can fully switch (home & work) which I can't. Also why should I retrain myself - I think there is a difference between intuitive and effective. If in doubt I definitively go for the later one, because thats what I can compensate with my brain.

Is there a point in Mac was first? Can't tell would be an feature by feature comparison, but it feels like sometimes Mac OS X is different just to be different (remember "Think different"?).

On the Alt+Tab/~ thing: I know that there is only one application but multiple documents - still it's not the way I think about that stuff when I'am working. I have two Terminal.app instances open and one Safari instance. Thats the three "applications" I want to switch between - having to thing "oh do I now want to switch to another instance of the application or is it a different application?" is well ... suboptimal, but definitively not intuitive (I don't want to think about it, I just want to do it).

Rename: Well we agree it's goofy and I'am not sure if "but the mac has done it that way forever..." is a real argument. I mean they can keep it, but would adding this to the context menu really be that much of an issue? Especially if you want to attract switchers you should provide multiple ways of achiving the same thing - I think thats really intuitive.

Maximize: Also I don't care what Mac OS X assumes what I want to do. I think I'am explicite enough when pressing the maximize buttom - I simply want the window to fill the screen. For instance when I'am writing something in NeoOffice (ok there is then the centered document issue in the Writer, but that should be out with the coming OpenOffice version). It also makes (for me) sense on my browser, my email program etc. - where is the point of having the desktop being poluted with dozens of stacked windows? That one really strikes me - especially as Apple is about esthetics.

Terminal: I have to acknowledge that I haven't given you a good example. To be honest I can't remember, but still have this "unsatisfied" feeling in my mind. Have to login to some remote box again to get back to that point.

> There are issues with the mac GUI to be sure... but the ones you have outlined are not really in that list.

Well for me they certainly are, because they really annoy me. So why bother when there is choise.

Final Cut Pro

[Enderandrew]

Other than Final Cut Pro (for which I can use Premiere on a PC instead) are there really any must-have Mac exclusives that don't run on Windows?

The Adobe Creative Suite can be run via Wine currently as far as I know.

Re:Final Cut Pro

[Anthony Baby]

Yes, a number of professional tools as well as some consumer level fun tools that make you wonder how you got by without them before.

Aperture, Logic Pro, Shake, Garageband, Keynote, and iPhoto which has a print-to-photobook option that makes it unequal to Picassa. Then there's third-party apps like those made by Panic such as Unison and Coda. Granted, it's easy to find a replacement binary newsreader, a presentation application, and a programmer's text editor. But these apps are really polish and a real pleasure to work with. There are also a number of guilty little pleasures, indie games and whatnot.

Re:Final Cut Pro

[Enderandrew]

Thanks. I will Google all those right now.

I know I may be blasted for this, but by far my favorite text-editor is Notepad++ which sadly is Windows only. If it had the compare feature of UltraEdit, or even better support to merge like WinMerge, it would be perfect in my book.

Re:Why?

[jessecurry]

I'm getting pretty excited about Leopard, mainly because of the dev tools that will be coming along with it. The new version of XCode is supposed to support Objective-C 2.0 which includes garbage collection, dot syntax, and the remaining features in the IDE that Visual Studio could boast over XCode.
Another thing that may help out is the CHUD Tools, available at Apple's Developer Connection.
The CHUD Tools are "applications and tools for measuring and optimizing software performance on Mac OS X as well as for hardware bringup and system benchmarking". Developers use them to find any type of optimization problem with their applications, but you may be able to use them to monitor performance in your specific configuration and send a bug report to Apple to have a look at, surprisingly Apple has been very responsive to any bug supports and feature requests I have sent in over the years.
Feel free to contact me via e-mail if you'd like any other info or to toss ideas back and forth.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maximize: Also I don't care what Mac OS X assumes what I want to do. I think I'am explicite enough when pressing the maximize buttom - I simply want the window to fill the screen.

Mac OS X windows don't have a "maximize" button. Do you mean the green "Zoom" button? Who on earth told you that it meant "maximize"??

Bloody hell....

[Anonymous Coward]

Spend $100 and buy a cheap intel box and run it alongside your Mac for Linux. Then you won't have to bitch and moan about the Mac's apparent instabilities. Or dual boot on your Mac, one for Linux, the other for Mac. Or start writing a Cocoa/Carbon/Mach emulator yourself, isn't that the FOSS way if you can't find one?

Or even better, just sell the Mac, use the huge amounts of money that you get from the sale of such an expensive machine to buy the bestest Linux box you can buy (which will be approx $10000 cheaper than any Mac and 50x faster), and then rely on FOSS software only since it's obviously so much better than native Mac apps.

I'm so sick of these STUPID arguments. WHY hasn't someone done , just because I need it now? Oh and btw. it has to be free, with no licensing or DRM, and I can't create it myself because I need it now, and it can't be from Apple or M$ because they're evil... ad nauseum.

Blah blah blah.

Re:Why?

[mosch]

I know there should be a rule against responding to fanbois, but I'm going to do it anyway.

1. The operating system is not the thing that needs to work on any computer. Your data is what needs to work on any computer.

I routinely work on the same data using Windows, Mac and FreeBSD machines. The only major exception to this is Office documents, which are always viewed using the Windows version of Office because, unfortunately, it is the only software that is truly compatible with that form of data.

2. I'm going to suggest that flexibility is overrated. Sure, it's fun to spend 40 hours tweaking every aspect of your computer just so. But it's probably better if you have a pretty damned computer on hour two, and you spend 38 hours working instead.

Some flexibility is good and neccessary. But desktop users should never, IMO, need to recompile a kernel, or anything along those lines. That's absurd. Even on the server level, that should be an optional step, for those few people who really need to save 22 megs of ram and 3 CPU cycles.

3. Security. This one is silly. It's a desktop PC. MAC doesn't do much of anything to address the security problems that are actually faced by desktop PCs. I'd argue that you get the best security from whichever system has the easiest to administer updates, simply because that means you are most likely to apply them in a timely manner.

4. Software Ecosystem. OS X has two major software ecosystems. It has the Unixy land of MacPorts and Fink, and then it has all the Mac apps too. If you want to buy TextMate, you can. If you want to run kde, or andjuta, you can do that. It's all possible. As far as I can tell, by moving to Linux, you actually get *less* choice.

5. Usability. I think a lot of this is really a matter of getting used to a new system. I say that as somebody who migrated from a heavily customized unix environment to OS X. It took me a day to feel productive. It took a week for things to feel normal. It took me months of constant use for me to realize how much more *work* i was getting done now that my applications were predictable, reliable and my focus was on my actual tasks, rather than on my system.

Re:Mac on Linux on PPC yes, Intel? Nope Won't Work

[aqui]

Ironically one of the reasons I bought an apple is because the 12" PPC offered the most compact powerful machine that was well built that I could find at the time (plus it looked cool).

I actually searched about linux compatibility before buying, but Apple switched the graphics card to NVIDIA for the 12" and I didn't notice till later.. Then I thought ok I'll get the NVIDIA close source builds like I did for my PCs... then found out PPC builds didn't exist.

Apparently Sleep and video behaviour is better with the ATI cards with people getting twin head displays working
with the 15" G4s, and iBooks with ATI cards.

Network support is there including wireless (BCM4300 = Airport Extreme), even WEP and WPA.

Much of it worked straight off with the 6.10 ubuntu install (although I'd install 6.06 now since ubuntu discontinued PPC support and 6.06 provides long term support).

I figure if my PPC lasts me another 1-2 yrs, then the MacBook + Linux issues will be worked out... or Dell will have something...

I'm guessing Isight will be an issue... not sure. I know that getting other cameras working with iChat was a disaster...

NetBSD's Darwin binary compatibility

[Anonymous Coward]

I the one that has been pushing the Darwin binary compatibility project for NetBSD. This is about emulating Darwin system calls, and hence it happens at the kernel/userland boundary. We basically present to Darwin processes the system call behaviors they see on the real Darwin.

More on how it happens can be readen in a paper presented at EuroBSDCon 2005. ONLAMP also interviewed me about it. I beleive the project made the ./ headlines at least once.

Now, the project status: it is dead, because nobody has interest in it. Users got excited about the idea of running Darwin apps on NetBSD, but that excitement did not push them into testing the thing.

When I gave up, we had a fairly good support for running command-line MacOS X.2 binaries on PowerPC. The JVM would have been likely to work, for instance. I asked if people could help testing that, but got no feedback.

The project could be resurected some day, if people interest rise again. The roadmap is straightforward: support x86 Darwin and work out a solution for Aqua application to display things. There might also have been kernel API change to accomodate.

About porting this work to Linux: This is kernel developement, so I guess there would be a huge effort of rewriting things to accomodate the Linux kernel internals.

Re:Why?

[james968]

I'm not sure if you are keeping up with all of the posts, but I think it is possible to run X instead of the Finder, but I don't think Coccoa GUI apps would run. From the Login screen type >console for the username. This will give you a CLI, instead of the login windows From here you should be able to login and start X. (I haven't tried this step). The old x86 version of Darwin, which apple release as OSS ran X instead of Finder.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

you sure you know what you're talking about?
I current;y use all 3 mainstream operating systems on my macbook pro
with FULL hardware support on ALL of them
even the keyboard backlight leds!

and, thanks to the awesomeness of parallels with 3d passthrough, i can run all 3 at the exact same time and still make use of 3d in any of them.

Sure, OSX is the host and the others are guests, but with 100% functionality and the option to reboot into the desired os native when i neeeeeed to squeeze that last bit of performance for gaming, why the hell would you care?!?!?!?

Re:Why?

[gellenburg]

With those reasons, why on Earth did you buy a Mac to begin with?

You would have been much better off with a Dell running Ubuntu.

Just sounds to me like you (and everyone else trying to accomplish the same thing) are trying to force a square peg into a round hole.

If the only thing that's tying you back is iTunes, then run the Windows version under Wine.

Re:Why?

[Anthony Baby]

Hi, yes I am keeping up. I am going to look into your suggestion. Even if I am unable to run Cocoa GUI apps that way, I am sure I can take advantage of this feature. Thanks.

Umm...

[Almahtar]

I *did* mention that I've been using Linux and FreeBSD for a while now, right? So the girlfriend topic really doesn't come up much... :-p

Re:Why?

[AnObfuscator]

I've been running Macs for years. I bought my PowerBook before I started using linux seriously, and Dell's Ubuntu offerings certainly didn't exist 2 years ago. Also, I'm considering buying another Mac because the MacBook is a really nice laptop. And I can put linux on that. ;)

Why? Doesn't make sense.

[veggiedude]

Why swap one form of UNIX for another? What sense is there in this? BSD is probably superior to Linux and that is why they choice it in the first place.

Alternatives to WINE

[edill3484]

Try Lina (openlina.com) or crossover.

Here's an answer - more than one machine

[dbIII]

Keep your mac. Run X windows on it. Have another machine running linux accessable via the network and run those things you want from linux on the macs display (even a window manager if you want). Doing things the other way around is possible with things like VNC but painfully slow for daily use.

Pixel

[Anonymous Coward]

There are few apps you can run natively on Linux and MacOSX, one great example is Pixel - http://www.kanzelsberger.com/

How to install OSX over Linux

[alizard]

Find out how to do it here.

Looks like a PITA, but a possible one if you really know what you're doing.

How to run Linux applications on Mac??

[lotho brandybuck]

How about, how to run linux apps on Mac? I happen to like Kmail a lot better than the default Mac mail. I got a Intel Mac laptop because I need to be able to dual boot Windows to run certain DSP programming apps (codecomposer TMS320F28xx) but I need stuff like wireless working, and a reasonably secure platform, when I'm out at a client site. Figured I could have a more reliable dual boot laptop with a Mac than Windows+Linux. But I really miss Kmail. Hows that for weird?? I also hate, hate openoffice on Mac, running thru X11. I tried Neooffice a while ago but it was even more unstable. Openoffice works a lot better on Linux. Also, there's of good stuff easily availiable for Linux that's not so easy on Mac... Open source stuff seems to either be availiable as RPM or apt-get for Linux, or just compiles pretty easy from tarball.. but Mac is a PITA (for me) to compile this stuff for. Everything seems to be in the wrong place! I like the Mac laptop quality, but I find the KDE desktop easier to use.. maybe familiarity. Maybe becuase I've generally got a bigger monitor on my desktop (although I run dual display often with the lap.) Or maybe I'm just weird. I hate the Finder! I like Windows Explorer better than the Finder! I also hate that the menubar for active program lives on the top of the screen, even if I'm using a window in my other monitor! If I had one wish for the Mac it'd be for Openoffice to work solid on it.

Re:How to run Linux applications on Mac??

[Anthony Baby]

That's really the easier thing to do. You have choices for getting traditionally Linux/UNIX apps to run on Mac: Darwinports, Fink, binary installations, and compile from source. I work a lot with open source video programs like x264, ffmpeg, etc. I don't know if RPM or apt-get are portable to other Linux systems (not too familiar with how they work), although I do once remember an RPM package for Slackware, so maybe it's trivial. Also, you're not limited to Apple's X11 app either. Running a Mac OS X on Linux though is much harder, discounting for full virtualization/emulation software.