Slashdot Mirror
Plethora of New User Space Filesystems For Mac OS X
DaringDan writes "As part of the recent MacFUSE 2.0 release Amit Singh has added support for an insane number of filesystems on the Mac. This video from Google and this blog post pretty much explain everything in detail but to sum-up Singh has written a new filesystem called AncientFS which lets you mount a ton of UNIX file formats starting from the very first version of UNIX. Even more interesting is that they have also taken Linux kernel implementations of filesystems like ufs, sysv-fs, minix-fs and made them work in user-space on the Mac, which means its now possible to read disks from OSes like FreeBSD, Solaris and NeXT on OS X. ext2/ext3 don't seem to be on the list but apparently the source for everything is provided, so hopefully some enterprising soul can apply the same techniques to ext2. One of their demos even has the old UNIX kernel compiled directly on the Mac through the original PDP C compiler by somehow executing the PDP binaries on OS X!"
I still have the old Intel Rhapsody DR2 disks lying around, and would love to see if this can read the filesystem. It's kind of fun playing around it what was NeXT with a MacOS interface, and at times I almost would rather have it than what OS X became, if only to eliminate the stupid gimmicks.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Especially if I ever need to recover one of my linux box's drives from a Mac.
But really, all I want for christmas is NTFS write support.
The practical value of all this may not be that great for 99% of the users out there, but I really understand the geek value of this all. It's like when I experimented calling a Volume Shadow Copy provider I wrote in C# from my Delphi application. Just for fun. I could have done this easier using only Delphi or C# only, but my point was just to see if it was possible. And it was cool, for me anyway.
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
What is needed is an ext3 implementation. There've been projects to bring ext2/3 to the Mac, but so far they've been incomplete and abandoned.
I'm actually pretty surprised that this hasn't been properly implemented already.
-- i am jack's amusing sig file
I'm curious why this was modded troll, I think the above poster has a valid point - why did slashdot miss out on a pretty important article that could potentially affect all Mac users, while they posted an article that's not really going to apply to more than 1% or 2% of Mac users?
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
...might include DEC's AdvFS, whose framework was recently released by HP. Yes, it would need some tidying up and porting, but couple that with an Alpha emulator and someone could run Tru64 UNIX apps and their data on a Mac...
Because slashdot isn't a public service announcement system and macfuse is more interesting?
> which means its now possible to read disks from
> OS's like FreeBSD,
I'm reasonably certain that you can read ufs/ffs file systems, and have been since 10.0.
A plethora of new user space filesystems for OS X and they didn't include the most common Linux filesystems? That seems odd.
A couple years old, but ext2fsx still works.
Best Slashdot Co
too bad
FUSE is interesting and nerdy. Scaremongering about how an operating system update may not work as advertised isn't particularly interesting, even if it is indicative of a QA failure on the part of the vendor.
I searched on that phrase and found a note on Apple's site with a Last Modified date of October 30, 2008: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1545
Heck, here's one that makes reference to Mac OS 9 and OS X 10.2.4: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1411
Doesn't sound like it's even remotely new, yet alone being new news.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
I'd say that what's interesting and what's not interesting is all a matter of opinion, but it stands to reason that if you own a Mac and would be interested in this software, you would also be interested in knowing that a recently released update from Apple is causing major system trouble.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
Indeed
Some users installing third party apps that modify their system files, and then apply updates over them have issues is hardly newsworthy.
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
Because /. is about tech news for nerds. Not a press release clearinghouse
Disclaimer: The opinions and actions of the US Gov't are in no way representative of those held by this author or its ci
I think it's more luck. You can bitch about luck if you want, but there is not much you can do about it. I know I haven't heard anything about the blue screen problem yet. Did you try submitting it? The other thing is that MacFuse is an interesting open source project that makes Linux heads' eyes turn round like plates and mouths start dueling. Given that many times when a linux related article is shown, slashdot usually ends up ending the alticle with a disclaimer stating that they are owned by linux.com (or was it linux.org ?), I don't think that an article like this making it through first is all that strange. The article would more likely catch the eyes of the editors. Well that's my guess anywho. :-)
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
filesystems are nerdy.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Well for one, it's not so you've lost a lot of the shock you're attempting to drum up.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
Yes, if you need support for a filesystem, changing the entire operating system around that need makes much more sense.
External hard drives, for one. I have some external drives I use on Linux boxes for various things. All of these boxes are up in an air conditioned server room. On occasion I need to get one file off onto my workstation, which is a Mac. Currently I have to walk it up to server room, connect it up, go back down, shell into the machine and mount it (if it's not an automounted drive), then somehow get the file out of the linux box to my Mac (scp or something). If I could just mount it on my workstation, it would save a lot of time.
Additionally, there are occasions where a recovery process needs to be run on a bad drive. The same procedure applies. It's mainly a convenience thing, but it would make the Mac into a much more useful tool for admins. I can definitely see the usefulness for FAT/NTFS in a desktop support environment.
Naturally you can always comment "Why use a Mac in the first place when you could have a linux desktop?" but I would reply that I don't have a choice, the CEO only buys Macs for workstations. So I have to use what I've got. This would make my life easier.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
So it supports and insane number of filesystems just not the two most popular ones?
Insane's the word...
You feel sleepy. Close your eyes. The opinions stated above are yours. You cannot imagine why you ever felt otherwise.
Let me Google that for you.
Yes, I'm sure this is a conspiracy! Everyone gather up your torches and pitchforks so we can go after CmdrTaco!
I think I actually had the "blue screen" problem that you're referring to. I say "I think" because I'm not sure what you're referring to. The only upgrade problem I've heard about is the one I had, which was very minor and nothing like a "blue screen of death". During the upgrade process, the upgrade stopped working and just sat there. It didn't crash, but it just sat there. If you did a hard reset, the system returned to the state it was in before you attempted the upgrade.
Now you might ask, "what about the data you lost during the hard reset?" That might be a concern, except that the upgrade process froze at a point when you were essentially in the middle of rebooting anyhow.
The whole thing was solved by downloading the installer for the update rather than using Apple's "Software Update" tool.
Is that what you're referring to? Because I don't think anyone is too concerned.
How is this news while the Mac Blue Screen problem upon upgrade thing isn't mentioned anywhere on the front page? (It was news on other sites yesterday.)
Maybe because it is not widespread? Because it might be caused by hardware failures or installed third-party software that most people do not have installed?
I did not have any problems with the 10.5.6 update other than having to reinstall my Cepstral Voices.
Slashdot reports on useful software for OS X: "What the hell? Why aren't you paying attention to $RANDOM_BUG_AFFECTING_1%_OF_MAC_USERS."
Slashdot reports on a random bug in the Linux kernel: "What the hell? Why aren't you reporting on all the great free software for Linux? Are you trying to give people the wrong idea?"
Dislike the Electoral College? Lobby your state to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.
You most certainly can if you want to. But if you have system files A and B and you modify B and later system update modifies A to call something in B that you changed the behavior of, then don't blame the system update.
That's all I'm saying.
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
Also, it seems to be a good time to plug Dokan and my FUSE4Win project :)
There's a wonderful project named "Dokan" (http://dokan-dev.net/en/), it makes posssible to write user-space filesystem in Windows.
I've adapted FUSE interface for it, so it's possible to use (almost) unmodified FUSE filesystems in Windows: http://hg.sharesource.org/fuse4win
Currently, SSHFS works fine. NTFS3g also works :)
Do you ever run a virtualization program (VMWare, VirtualPC, QEmu, VirtualBox, etc.) on your Mac? Ever had a situation where you wish you could move files from the host to the client? Tired of creating ISOs just to move files back and forth?
Well, have we go a solution for you!!!! ;-)
(Call now! Operators are standing by!)
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Too bad it for the mac, lets make it work under Ubuntu so it can be useful to those of us who don't want to overpay for our hardware.
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso
OK, so Blu-Ray and HD-DVD (and UDF 2.5) is a "bag of hurt" but AncientFS makes it to the Mac?
Irony.
Can we at least have stuff like this on either an open OS, or at least on a closed one that doesn't issue fatwas against filesystem types, like Windows?
From a geek standpoint, one is a cool project and the other a mundane bit of troubleshooting.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Spoken like a person who knows nothing about the joys of coding and having fun seeing what you can do with your computer system. Congratulations on working a bit of flamebait in there too - your comment is a double whammy of stupidity.
No, NTFS has support via NTFS3G. The other popular file system, FAT, is already supported natively.
Sorry, which other sites? I'm a fairly avid reader of these things and I haven't spotted any reports over and above the usual update glitch reports.
Jefe: I have put many beautiful new user space filesystems in the Mac OS X, each of them filled with little suprises.
El Guapo: Many new user space filesystems?
Jefe: Oh yes, many!
El Guapo: Would you say I have a plethora of new user space filesystems?
Jefe: A what?
El Guapo: A *plethora*.
Jefe: Oh yes, you have a plethora.
El Guapo: Jefe, what is a plethora?
Jefe: Why, El Guapo?
El Guapo: Well, you told me I have a plethora. And I just would like to know if you know what a plethora is. I would not like to think that a person would tell someone he has a plethora, and then find out that that person has *no idea* what it means to have a plethora.
Jefe: Forgive me, El Guapo. I know that I, Jefe, do not have your superior intellect and education. But could it be that once again, you are angry at something else, and are looking to take it out on me?
So it supports and insane number of filesystems just not the two most popular ones?
It's true that FUSE doesn't support the #1 most popular file system, but it doesn't need to. FAT is already supported by every major OS.
For the sake of argument, let's not count 9660 and UDF, which are also built-in to most OSes.
FUSE does support NTFS, which is #2.
HFS is probably in 3rd place, with ext* rather farther down the list.
Information Week, PC Mag, The Register, and eFlux to name a few.
Let us not become the evil that we deplore.
From my impression an Apple update causing major system trouble really isn't news.
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
you mean BARELY causing? I am sorry but a hundred or so postings when there are over a million OS 10.5 users out there is NOT in my mind major trouble.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
How is this news while the Mac Blue Screen problem upon upgrade thing isn't mentioned anywhere on the front page? (It was news on other sites yesterday.)
Because no one submitted an article about the Mac Blue Screen issue that was interesting enough to make it to the main page. That's really all there is to it.
There isn't really any sort of why is this newsworthy and another issue isn't. Nothing that people were interested in was submitted, so it is not on the front page.
He talks about 3 generation of Mac OS X where one is censored or illegal. Anyone know what he meant? *confused*
What! No ReiserFS support; sounds like discrimination against a convicted murderer to me.
Jamey
Jamey Kirby
welcome the ability to compile and run ancient PDP-11 binaries on my shiny new Mac..."values of B will give rise to dom!"
I've got your sig, right here.
"but it stands to reason that if you own a Mac and would be interested in this software, you would also be interested in knowing that a recently released update from Apple is causing major system trouble."
And yet, this isn't a Mac news site. If you as a Mac owner are interested in Mac news, go to Macrumors or something. This is interesting because it's a new and unusual use of fuse, not because it increases the filesystems on the Mac.
Apple's GS/OS had FSTs (File System Translators) that allowed that operating system to access HFS, ProDOS, DOS 3.3, and FAT volumes. How does FUSE compare in function to GS/OS's FSTs? You know, apart from working with non-obsolete hardware.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Thank you Apple for making all of this possible.
If it weren't for Apple, Unix and open source would be dead and all of this history and cool code would be gone.
So once again, THANK YOU APPLE. For doing what no one else can or could ever do.
Think different. Think better. THINK APPLE.
They aren't providing a GUI for sshfs on macfuse anymore
I was disappointed about that too until I discovered MacFusion, which is like the sshfs GUI app, but does any FS that MacFUSE supports.
As probably the most commonly used filesystem on linux, is ext3 supported by Mac OS X FUSE?
If not, why not?
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
As such, this means FUSE is less reliable, poorly documented, MUCH harder to use, and is chock full of bugs.
OS X is proof positive that closed source is superior to open source in every way.
It actually just supports sshfs and ftpfs at the moment, but people could write plugins for it to support other FUSE plugins.
This isn't a Windows news site either, yet we get tons of stories about Windows Update failures and Windows exploits.
Your argument is weak, grasshopper.
Your brain is not a computer.
Naturally you can always comment "Why use a Mac in the first place when you could have a linux desktop?"
Why not both at the same time?
Completely agree. No matter what anyone else says on this thread you know that if Vista was bluescreening on an upgrade it would have made SlashDot.
How is this news while the Mac Blue Screen problem upon upgrade thing isn't mentioned anywhere on the front page? (It was news on other sites yesterday.)
It will be on Slashdot - you're just a few months early.
I find it odd that they used the linux implementation to mount UFS instead of the FreeBSD version which OSX(Darwin) is based upon already
I'm guessing because if there are problems with the last apple update not that many people are impacted is probably why it isn't making the news. I know we upgraded all of our systems in our company and didn't have any issues, just installed rebooted and was back. That is probably the experience most people had which is why you aren't seeing headlines about a handful of people that might have had trouble updating.
OK, so Blu-Ray and HD-DVD (and UDF 2.5) is a "bag of hurt"
I know what you're referring to, but starting with Leopard, UDF 2.5 is built-in. Also, Apple's DVD Player will play HD DVDs if they're mastered with DVD Studio Pro (i.e. not encrypted).
Don't buy ReadDVD! by Software Architects to get UDF 2.5, 2.6 support for Tiger. It does not work.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
I hadn't heard of it, but reading the story elsewhere I can say I have had no problem with the latest update on my 4-core Mac Pro.
I'm not seeing it on the Firehose. Perhaps you'd like to submit it?
I have had a different problem where the system wouldn't take me to the login screen, sticking on the blue background. Pulling the iPod Shuffle from its USB dock immediately resolves that problem. It just doesn't like having it connected at startup.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
VMWare and Parallels have drag+drop support from host to VM (unsure about the others). If others don't have that, they at least have a shared folder support. This is what drag+drop is essentially, except it moves the copied files to the location at which you dragged the file into.
But back to the OP... Some people DO migrate data from one OS to another. People DO move from Windows to Mac, Mac to Linux, Linux to Mac, etc. Using your philosophy, we should all just stick to ONE OS, with ONE filesystem, essentially eliminating any innovation. Wait, I think that's already been tried before ...
I've seen plenty of stories where Joe hacked this, or John hacked that or Larry came up with this ingenious hack. But since when is slashdot concerned with the details of said hack?
If your news story is "If you hack your Mac OS X system files and then upgrade, you'll get a blue screen," then that's not news on slashdot. Anyone crowd who is "linux-heavy" should know this and go "duh!", and anyone who is not in that crowd has no idea what that means anyway.
The news here is not that exists but the details of what a proper OS X hacker might do to avoid getting the blue screen. That type of information properly belongs on a hacker website properly formatted and dedicated to handle this type of information. Slashdot's never handled that kind of hacker detail and I don't believe they intend to, nor should they.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
That certainly wouldn't be news. News implies something novel or unusual.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
So that's what happened? I have a Mac Mini with Bootcamp on it. I messed up my windows installation, so I tried to go back to the Mac boot, and while doing an update, it showed that nice blue screen and a dramatic black clock (the one with bars but really dark) and died. After trying to reboot, never booted again.
Good news was, that I only had a Windows CD close to me, so I repartitioned and completely removed Mac from the Macmini (which I thought wouldn't be possible).
ext2/ext3 don't seem to be on the list but apparently the source for everything is provided, so hopefully some enterprising soul can apply the same techniques to ext2
Corrected:
ext2/ext3 don't seem to be on the list but apparently the source for everything is provided, so the maintainer will be harassed for this feature while the "community" sits idly by.
Similes are like metaphors
There are a variety of circumstances under which this doesn't work. Particularly when dealing with a custom build of an OS or a true hobby OS. Such OSes often have support for common file systems, so this sort of solution is perfect.
In addition, using a lesser known VM environment can also lead to difficulties in transferring data back and forth. e.g. QEmu, Bochs, etc. Apart from having low price tags, these projects rock because you can add debugging info into the VM and recompile. Makes it a lot easier to understand what you're doing wrong. (Especially when we're talking about kicking a kernel you wrote into protected mode. Always fraught with troubles, that is.)
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Not to mention the people at Macworld, MacBytes, and MacRumors aren't even posting this news. It makes me question the newsieness of the blue screen story.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
So somebody at Apple finally discovered SIMH, which has been running on other UNIX systems (and Windows) for many years.
I quickly checked Macworld, MacBytes, and MacRumors and didn't see anything. That still makes me question the newsiness of the problem. *shrug* If the Mac-centric sites aren't covering it, something is strange.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
Wasn't this sort of thing the idea behind the original "plug-in" mechanism planned for Reiser 4? I remember being intrigued by the idea of writing file-system customizations in perl, and I was looking forward to playing around with it to see what could be done with it.
Unfortunately, it appears that the kernel devs don't want to hear about any functionality that doesn't fit in the box of their VFS layer.
True. It should have been modded offtopic, not troll.
These are mostly read-only implementations for dealing with archival data. They're not read/write, which is more work to implement and not that useful.
QNX has had user-space file systems for decades. (It's a microkernel; almost everything is in user space.) Some users wrote file system implementations for weird file systems, like .zip files. Most of the modern QNX file system action is supporting various flash-based file systems and networked file systems.
Naturally you can always comment "Why use a Mac in the first place when you could have a linux desktop?" but I would reply that I don't have a choice, the CEO only buys Macs for workstations. So I have to use what I've got. This would make my life easier.
And Macs don't run linux?
Schwing!
My point is not to rubbish the development effort, I'm sure it's significant, and I have my own projects. My point is that it's duplicated effort. Interesting, for sure, but there are more intelligent ways to move data around than mounting a minix / OS2 / whatever drive on a system that was never meant to support them.
In addition to the solution already given, can I suggest "virtual ethernet connection".
If you've got enough time to make isos to move data back and forth youve got time to learn how to use the vm properly...
Been there, done that. As I mentioned in another post, it's not always a viable solution.
Q: Am I the only one around here who uses VMs to write or build custom kernels?
This being Slashdot and all, I'd generally expect a greater response in the affirmative. Hmm...
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
So basically you have a windows box with a 33% markup on price? Good for you!
If you've had the problem... I'm sure you're aware. And as nerds... we are already aware of the problems from other news sites that don't say "News for Nerds... Stuff that matters" :)
When Apple releases a fix or tells us what the problem really is (rather than relying on posts to forums..sorry, "lots" of posts to forums on the subject) THEN I suspect it'll qualify for "news for nerds"...
But until then, the MacFuse and AincentFS announcements ARE news.
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
Sorry, I was tired and annoyed when I wrote my original comment. I just think that it's a waste of time *for a workstation*. It makes more sense to have the drive in a machine that can already support it and get the data over the wire. The filesystem should be more or less transparent to the user.
Macs are gay.
Yeah. My macs are gay. But I talked to them, I explained I am hetero, and they never molested me - they never did anything to hurt my feelings. I am tolerant, but not interested in gay relationships. My computers understood that.
Not that I would ever be interested in having sex with a computer anyway...
Roberto
I'm probably betraying my ignorance here, but the ability to implement filesystems in userspace was supposed to be one of the advantages of microkernel based operating systems. Given that Mac OS X is based on the Mach kernel, could this be better done as a Mach server (i.e. at the Mach layer) than in user space under the FreeBSD layer? I recognize that Darwin doesn't really take advantage of Mach as a microkernel in the way that it should, but surely there's *some* advantage to being built on Mach, right?
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
This is the one I'd most like to see. I've started using it extensively on my Linux boxes, and I like it much better than NFS or Samba. Big transfers require more CPU because of the encryption, but on WiFi transfer speeds are that high anyway, so it's not a bottleneck. Anyway, my wife's Mac is the one machine in the house it doesn't work on, and it would be great if she could use sshfs to mount stuff from the file server.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Let's face it, there are not many small quiet boxes with digital video outputs out there.
This makes that little box a nice media center and using windows allows to put a TV tuner reducing the suffering of finding drivers and software for Mac.
Besides, I didn't pay for it.
Submitting the story is tempting, but you can see from the responses here that it isn't wise to do anything that might get one labelled a Mac hater. (I'm rather indifferent, by the way, even though I am antagonistic toward Microsoft.)
Let us not become the evil that we deplore.
Not that I would ever be interested in having sex with a computer anyway...
Well, SOMEBODY'S in the minority on Slashdot...
you mean BARELY causing? I am sorry but ten thousand or so postings when there are over a billion Windows users out there is NOT in my mind major trouble.
> "One of their demos even has the old UNIX kernel compiled directly on the Mac
> through the original PDP C compiler by somehow executing the PDP binaries on OS X!"
Hmpfh... Circa 1978-79, Forrest Howard and I wrote a PDP-10 simulator that ran on a PDP-11/70 (a 36 bit machine on a 16 bit machine for those not educated in DEC hardware). It was used to recompile the DEC Fortran compiler which was written in Bliss-11. And the Bliss-11 compiler could only be run on a PDP-10. Lacking a PDP-10 (expensive pseudo-mainframe computers in those days) we simply wrote a simulator. It didn't run fast, as I recall the DEC Fortran compiler recompile took several weeks, but it did run.
Reproducing a PDP-11 sumulator on modern hardware would be relatively trivial, though it would have been much easier on older Macs because it could be argued that the 680X0 architecture was a knockoff of the PDP-11 architecture. Though one could suppose that current era (non-680X0 or non-PowerPC) machines are fast enough that it is a noop. I think the PDP-11 had a 300 ns cycle time and current machines are ~10x faster. Any current machines could easily simulate a '70s era minicomputer (or even most mainframes).
It ain't easy to make an angry post on the blog when your computer just won't boot :)
Why not plug the external drive into a router with USB support? Funny how over the network these things work better.
Well, this is how I overcame the same issue.
Dennis Onstenk
Hahaha
I can't stop laughing either. There goes another weekend.
causing major system trouble
As in "breaking Pwnage tool"? Oh noes...
I have a bunch of old floppies I'd like to access... B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
seems to make this thing work. I have downloaded the DMG, mounted it, installed the package, rebooted, and... I have a new Pref Pane with very little functionality.
If I open my Terminal and type sshfs - nothing (command not found).
I am surprised at the lack of a straightforward "Getting started" page.
Can anyone point me to something that will help me find out HOW TO mount a drive?
Has anyone been able to get gmailfs working? or could point me to an instruction page I have tried getting it working and have not had a lot of luck.
thanks,
darmou
-- remove NOSPAM for actual email address -- Things are not as square as they may seem
I know this is off topic, but I really like the words 'Plethora' as well as 'thwart'.
Unfortunately I haven't been able to make up a sentence with both plethora and thwart in them that make much sense.
Something like: "I will thwart you and your plethora of new user space file systems."
Back to work....
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
makes Linux heads' eyes turn round like plates and mouths start dueling.
That's an exaggeration, but this is kind of important in that it removes one of the larger arguments for Linux over OS X: The absurd number of filesystems the Linux kernel supports.
Just one step closer to OS X completely displacing Linux on the high-end geek desktop.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
WTF is the relationship between having a filesystem in userspace and emulating a PDP ?
Bad article.
How is executing PDP binaries on OSX related to filesystems?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I remember being intrigued by the idea of writing file-system customizations in perl,
Nnnngggggg *kaboom*
Please help metamoderate.
I did a quick search of the macfuse wiki, but it seems they haven't implemented support for XFS... It would be so nice to be able to format my firewire drive with xfs and use it between my 64studio box and my macbook.. Owell, guess I'll have to wait some more. No coder, I.
I use friend/foe to signal strong [dis]agreement instead of mod points. What else are f/f good for?
Probably because no-one thought to submit it.
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
Thank you FOSS for making all of this possible.
If it weren't for FOSS, Apple and OSX would be dead and all of this history and cool code would be gone.
So once again, THANK YOU FOSS, for doing what no one else can or could ever do.
Think different. Think better. THINK FOSS.
Sam ty sig.
And Macs don't run linux?
They probably don't if the CEO doesn't want them to.
Just one step closer to OS X completely displacing Linux on the high-end geek desktop.
Why yes, now that I know that I can finally read my huge archive of MinixFS data, I'm buying a Mac tomorrow. (rolleyes)
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
Well, yes, exactly -- the excuses are getting lamer and lamer, even to me.
Hardware is expensive! But you get what you pay for. Meanwhile, I spent $2700 on a fully-loaded Dell -- I'm not convinced that a Mac would've been more expensive, especially if I don't buy RAM from Apple.
No virtual desktops! In Tiger, there were a few third-party ways to make that work. In Leopard, there's Spaces.
No package management! Macports and Software Update covers most things I would care about. The rest have built-in updaters of their own. Not ideal, but not horrible, either.
Commandline is BSD and weird! Not worse than Windows, and Macports makes it a lot more bearable. Besides which, Terminal.app has some features I wish I could find in an xterm clone. And with Leopard, it's bash by default, there's Ruby on Rails there out of the box (complete with Rubygems), and so on.
Wine! Crossover. Filesystems! MacFUSE. Kopete! Adium. And so on...
The only one I've really got now are low-level performance metrics that really don't matter much, the fact that it's proprietary (but so is half my X server, with nVidia), and the fact that there's a lot of the GUI that I really don't like (strange but true!) -- and the fact that it's not Linux, so I'd have to learn something other than iptables.
So, if someone ported KDE4 to OS X, and I could use it as a shell replacement, complete with sloppy focus, wobbly windows, hotkeys and all, and without breaking compatibility with existing OS X apps, I'd seriously consider a Mac for my next box.
As it is, I'm not entirely sure that's possible with the way the OS X video system is written, and there wouldn't be a lot of point if I somehow brought up X.org instead of Aqua.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Not that I would ever be interested in having sex with a computer anyway...
Not that there's anything wrong with that!
"Why would anybody need an excuse to not buy a Mac ?"
I have a Mac and don't use it because I don't like it.
I've been running Unix for ages and I found the Mac interface painful, Windows like and annoying. My iBook has been used as a paperweight for the last two years. I do not plan to give it another try.
And if KDE is ported to MacOS (which it should be), that's a reason to get a Mac ? You do realize you can get KDE right now on any generic piece of kit ?
Get a Mac if it floats your boat, but if KDE or filesystem support is the kind of thing you're looking for, I really don't have the faintest idea why you should bother locking yourself in that platform.
You Mac people are getting weirder each generation.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
The difference is that this is also interesting to people who do not own a Mac: because it is a technical achievement, because it might show what can be achieved with Fuse on Linux, because it might let you recover some old archive you have, because knowing about MacFUSE might help if you need to mount a Linux drive on a Mac, etc.
btrfs? I think not!
Macs are not very good at running other FS in User Space.
The NTFS3G user space file system is a joke.
Unlike NT which loads them into Kernel, Mac does NOT trust anything not provided by Jobs.
(Disclaimer: Iam agnostic to both: I own an iBook G4 and a kickass PC hardware with 9800GTX+ SLI running XP).
NTFS read-write facility is slow, buggy and frequently crashes the application.
I can format my disks in MacFS and use MacDrive to read write to them in XP. That's wayyy faster.
The only two file systems that Mac truly supports (i mean as fast as NTFS in XP) are FAT32 and MacFS.
The rest are a joke, and i couldn't care less, since most of the implementations would never make it to the real world.
Have you EVER seen a Mac in production running on top of a NTFS read-write RAID?
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
My iBook has been used as a paperweight for the last two years.
Why didn't you put Linux on it, then?
You do realize you can get KDE right now on any generic piece of kit ?
I am typing this from Konqueror on a Dell laptop. I'm well aware of the hardware advantages of Linux. I don't much care, though -- it is worth spending a bit extra to know that all the hardware works, and is supported -- which is why I bought a Dell with Ubuntu preinstalled. (And, predictably, Windows XP was harder to install on this than a fresh Kubuntu.)
And it's not bad hardware. I love the Macbook form-factor, and I love the Apple aluminum keyboard I'm using right now. (I also hate the Mighty Mouse with a passion, but that's a bit offtopic...)
On top of which:
if KDE or filesystem support is the kind of thing you're looking for, I really don't have the faintest idea why you should bother locking yourself in that platform.
No, KDE and filesystem support are a couple of the reasons I refuse to use OS X now. There are a number of reasons I would love to have a Mac.
For example: I cannot run Photoshop on KDE on any generic piece of kit. I would have to install Windows to do that, and that's quite a bit worse than OS X, even if I can find a way of pulling the same trick and using KDE as the shell instead of Explorer.
And speaking of this keyboard: Believe it or not, it has firmware. That firmware can be updated via Software Update on OS X. I know of no way to update it on Linux -- so I occasionally borrow a Mac for that purpose alone.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Yeah, I have Boot Camp and Parallels, etc. But some of my work requires using some Mac software and having to reboot to access a filesystem would be detrimental. Parallels would be cool if it worked, but it has a hard time passing USB hardware through without OSX grabbing it first. There's probably a way to do that, but the implementation would be at least as hard as running MacFUSE ;)
Cool! Amazing Toys.
Just one step closer to OS X completely displacing Linux on the high-end geek desktop.
Not gonna happen until OS X is the same price as Fedora/Ubuntu/Gentoo. Ever.
I was taught to respect my elders. The trouble is, it's getting harder and harder to find some.
I'm both a Mac and a Linux user. I used to use the Mac quite a bit, but I'm using it less and less now. An ext3 implementation would be nice, but I basically don't care much anymore.
I don't own a mac and I'm still pretty interested in knowing when Updates and such go awry.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
Well, for the last year or so, I have been using NTFS-3G every single day of the week, using it to running my virtual machines stored on a USB hard disk (performance is excellent, by the way -- with Linux's tendency to cache the VM images, Windows guest performance is easily better than running natively off a physical partition).
At my college, and at home, there are computers with faulty USB connectors. A few times a week, when running a VM, my USB cable will wriggle loose, and the hard disk will disconnect. Yes, while it's running NTFS-3G.
However, not once in the last 12 months has my NTFS filesystem become corrupted. Not once.
And MS Office can't even read files between versions?
Yeah, pretty much trolling, but come on... I need a friggin add-on between versions?
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Someone makes a filesystem in the 70s, and then 30 years later is still accessible...I don't think that's gonna be the case with Windows in 30 years in the future!
Newegg gives away the motherboard porn for free. =)
Not gonna happen until OS X is the same price as Fedora/Ubuntu/Gentoo.
Read that again: high-end geek desktop. I spent $2700 on a laptop -- were it a Mac, OS X would be included in the price. But what's an extra $100 or $200 on top of that?
And if you were talking about "freedom", there isn't currently a viable, fully open source OS. I'm running Linux right now... probably half my X and a third of my kernel is nvidia, so WTF is the point? Most of the advantages of the Linux kernel, for me, as a desktop, are little pockets of flexibility that other people have built (like FUSE), and the slim possibility of fixing my own drivers, when my hardware isn't directly supported (but OS X has commercially-supported ones).
I can still see plenty of uses for Linux. I use it on the server, I use it on older hardware, I assemble spare parts into working fileservers and routers, and I play with virtual machines, VPNs, and other cool stuff. And these are indeed places where price matters -- I don't particularly want to pay an extra 10% for an EC2 instance just to run Windows, for example, and there's no way to turn them into XServes.
But if I'm going to be spending thousands of dollars on a new computer, I'm certainly willing to spend a premium on the OS, if it's better. The hardware looks and feels slicker, too.
Right now, the balance is against Apple. They were dicks about my warranty on that Powerbook, I still remember enough things to hate about the OS X user interface, and Linux support for their hardware (Macbooks especially) is poor, so I know if I bought one, it'd be running Windows or OS X as a host OS, whether I want it or not.
But more and more often, I'm becoming envious of things like being able to plug my laptop into a projector and have it Just Work, instead of having to go edit xorg.conf and ctrl+alt+backspace.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Well, you're a mystery to me. I have a relatively highend desktop. I built it myself, for ~$800 (not counting monitor and peripherals, of course). I don't get paying $2500+ for a PC these days. But it's a free country.
I was taught to respect my elders. The trouble is, it's getting harder and harder to find some.
I have a relatively highend desktop. I built it myself, for ~$800 (not counting monitor and peripherals, of course).
Well, there's at least two huge differences:
I was counting a monitor and peripherals. Specifically, I got an external hard drive and a 24" 1080p monitor with it, as well as some extra power cords and such.
And, notice it's a laptop. It's got better specs than my old desktop.
But hey, if I wanted to spend less money, a refurbished iMac isn't much more than you spent.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I always wondered why they were so stylish and a hard working! Thanks Mr. Troll!!
That should be bootcamp, because it was the only thing I had installed before it crashed, different from the standard MacOS installation.