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Torvalds: Free OS X Is No Threat To Linux
jfruh writes "Apple is now offering upgrades to the latest version of OS X for free. When Linux inventor Linus Torvalds was asked whether this threatened Linux (presumably by someone who had only a passing knowledge of all the things 'free' can mean when applied to software) it gave him an opportunity for a passionate defense of open source. Torvalds also says that he'll keep programming until it gets 'not interesting,' which hasn't happened yet." The newest version of OS X may be gratis for Apple hardware buyers, but it's notably far from the original, (literally) un-branded sense of "mavericks."
This is a clever ruse on Linus' part. The real issue, which he completely ignores, is the genuine threat to Linux provided by Microsoft's release of a free Windows 8.1 upgrade.
Even if he doesn't want to talk about it, at least publicly, I know he's scared shitless.
...but Apple users had to pay a bundle for the OS that they're upgrading to Maverick from, remember.
Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
That article jerked around from one disjoint topic to another, and appears to have been written by someone who is functionally illiterate in computer technology.
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
Open source (free as in speech), as a different beast entirely, and we are doing very well, TYVM.
Silence is a state of mime.
The S is in there for a reason.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mavericks_(location)
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
OSX - free as in mousetrap cheese.
They only offer UPGRADES for free? Then nothing changed, really. You'd still need to buy a Mac to use it legally. In fact it's kinda stupid OS updates were paid for in the first place.
Free OS X Is No Threat To Linux
Since Mavericks only runs on Apple hardware unless you hack the OS, I'd say that's pretty obvious so why get up on a soap box and make noise about it? And just for the record the OS X core components are open source.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
The fact is, most Linux users get interested in installing/using it because they've got (typically older) hardware in front of them that they'd like to make useful without spending more money on it.
The only Mac system users I've encountered who ran Linux were using very old "legacy" Macs that have long since been abandoned by Apple with software updates or support.
So generally, the use-cases for OS X or Linux just don't really cross much.
How is an OS that one has to initially pay for and only runs on proprietary hardware going to be a threat to a freely downloadable OS that runs on commodity hardware?
No, the true issue here is the quality of the software that runs on the OS, not the OS itself.
Free OS X doesn't compete with Linux except on a very limited basis - it's free.
Unless you build a hackintosh and blatantly violate the license you can't even install OS X anywhere except a Mac. It's very distinctly not open source and arguably just as proprietary as Windows. It's free, but only if you purchased the hardware to begin with, and Apple has never been accused of making price competitive hardware by anybody except a fanboy.
You can certainly run Linux on your Mac, but that's a pretty limited subset of people to begin with. Considering the last Mac OS only cost $20 to begin with and you likely didn't have too many people holding out for cost reasons alone. In other words, the people that wanted to have the Mac hardware with Linux almost certainly made that move a while ago. This really doesn't impact much of anyone.
... doesn't mean the software that runs on that OS is free.
I think the people who use Macs, and the people who use Linux, have very different goals for their computer use. Mac users typically want multimedia and online sharing, while Linux users are software developers. True, some Linux users may use Macs because they're UNIX laptops (I'm guilty) but they aren't really the content consumption/cloud sharing/app buying audience Apple is milking. Apple doesn't care about the upgrade, because they want people to buy stuff online.
...compared to free,
Today's caviat is that I admit not knowing how much OS X 10.8 cost off the shelf. Do know that previous versions cost well above that, and when I was looking up 10.4 for a blueberry iMac it cost more than 10.8.
Also, I stick by what I was trying to say: any price > free and thus the whole premise of competition regarding a free upgrade to an OS you paid for (X 10.9 or Win 8.1) to the truly free-of-charge is kind of silly.
Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
That's what I was going for: I knew several versions of Mac's OS were costly even if the very latest couple were not, that's where I was coming from.
Post as Flamebait? Heh, only if you're an Apple fanboy. ;-)
Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
When I read about the OS X Maverick's free release...
I didn't think about how it would affect Linux on the desktop at all...thought never crossed my mind...
Linux is just irrelevant to the desktop market. Is that harsh? Not intended to be...I still hate M$ and think Apple is a little fruity...
But srsly...after 8 years on /. reading ridiculous thread after thread debating Debian vs Red Hat or w/e (try Gentoo!)...
The open source world just hasnt' evolved the maturity to make a universal desktop OS **that people use**
It's totally possible...it *will* happen...but Linux destop fanbois need to rethink some shit
Thank you Dave Raggett
...confuse prohibition (no beer) with fascism (control of speech and thought)? This is free as in beer, not free as in speech.
You don't have to have an intermediate version, just Apple hardware. On the other hand, how you would install it without an earlier version of OS X already installed [or getting it from a friend], I have no idea.
So it's true that there is a huge difference between just supporting their hardware versus releasing OS X on their website for anyone to attempt to use.
In my recollection, Linus has never been much for getting worked up in fanbois pissing matches (pertaining to platform "greatness" or market share) What gets him riled up is stupid brain-dead code stupidly done by stupid people for stupid reasons. That stuff he'll take issue with regardless and argue about forever.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Its not a threat until Apple starts to un-tether its OS from its hardware. If Apple were to have the driver database that Linux has, then Linus may sing a different tune.
Saavik, two As.
Posted anonymously because pedants aren't appreciated.
Have a cookie.
Milk?
They'll realize how important you are, one day.
It is somewhat of a tradition that surf spot names appear "plural", but this is usually just a bastardization of the possessive form. For example, "Mavericks" really should be "Maverick's", but for some reason the apostrophe just wasn't cool enough. Hence we get "Mavericks", which appears plural to the untrained eye, but is actually possessive.
In the end, it doesn't have to make sense. If other surfers repeat it, it sticks.
So you're saying that it won't be free for my Franklin Ace?
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
In fact, one of the reasons Torvalds uses the term open source instead of free software because there is a difference between open and free, he said.
While Apple's Mavericks update might be free it is not open source and people still need expensive hardware to use the OS, he said.
I think RMS' head just exploded
Apple has always said "Mavericks" is named after the surfing site not animals, not persons. Just like Longhorn was not named after the animal but a bar like Whistler.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Isn't OS X BSD based and not Linux?
Price isn't the issue for me. The issue is that with Linux, you can always dig deeper when debugging and hacking. With Windows, OSX, or any other system without full source, the debugging will hit a brick wall at system calls.
...Apple does not have to fail for Linux to succeed, nor visa versa.
The comments on this thread remind me of heated conversations I had as a 13 year old, when my friends and I couldn't agree on which was better, the Commodore 64, the Apple IIe or the Atari 800. Anyone who's read my previous comments probably knows that I was firmly in the Commodore 64 camp.
The CB App. What's your 20?
It's not Free Software, it's just a free binary. Really says it all.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
next year. Nice! Where do I preorder both? http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/news/2004/03/62867
Microsoft is a joke when it comes to licensing their products. Why couldn't they just release the Windows 8.1 pro for $99 3 license. Instead we get standard, pro, pro packs, family packs, upgrade 8.1 to 8.1 pro, etc.... Make it fucking simple for the regular joe. I can't blame people(not into gaming, adobe products, or windows development) for leaving MS for Linux which is $0 cost. Now, people complaining of issues when upgrading from 8 to 8.1. They should of allowed their customers who bought a windows 8 copy to download a full 8.1 ISO instead of the upgrade broken path. Shitheads. Corporations always ripping of their fucking customers, just ask Time Warner Cable.
Is there anybody out there that is actually debating between a Mac or a Linux box? It really seems like two separate markets.
This question makes as much sense as asking if free screen wash with a $100,000 car is any threat to a free online recipe for home made screen wash.
(Excluding the esoteric and technically illegal hackintosh route) Free OS X vs Free Linux is a stupid comparison... one runs on almost all consumer hardware and the other only runs on a very specific brand of hardware. It's free because you pay for the hardware that it runs on...
I'm an Aspie, and I need my sarcasm detector retrained. What's a good place to get this done in northeast Indiana? Do they take insurance? I'd use Google, but I think my malfunctioning sarcasm detector is keeping me from coming up with keywords.
The newest version of OS X may be gratis for Apple hardware buyers, but it's notably far from the original, (literally) un-branded sense of "mavericks."
Good to see that "Timmeh" is just as bone-headed as ever. "Mavericks" is named after the California surf spot not an animal. That's why the default wallpaper and the promo images of the Macs running Mavericks are of a large wave. The keynote introducing Mavericks explained this as well.
* free with hardware purchase.
hardware is high priced and as OSX cost build in with no way to order with no os.
Oh Linus Torvalds. Don't fret. Apple only has more installations of OSX than all your desktop linux installs combined. I guess free isn't better?
The assumption appears to be that people use Linux because it's free, and therefor, free alternatives (that matter) are a threat.
In my experience, free has little to do (if at all) to most people that use Linux, so OSX being free is apples to penguins.
Where has this cretinous Internet meme arisen from?. Apple's OS is NOT free, never will be free, and Apple will continue to sue to destruction ANYONE who attempts to build hardware designed to run ANY Apple OS.
Apple will continue to chose whether or not to directly seek payment for UPGRADES to any of its software, including versions of various OSes. Keeping its customers "on the same page" is very, very profitable to Apple when when considers how important the Apple store is.
But you see the same old technology SHILL sites, including Slashdot, trying to get nerdy sheeple to think something significant has happened in the greater industry now Apple has provided a given upgrade for 'free'. It is almost as if Apple's PR people have been travelling around handing out free cash- oh wait, they is EXACTLY what has been happening- generous cash pay-outs for tech sites promoting this 'free' nonsense.
Only ONE thing threatens Linux- and that is Linux (the people behind it). Had Linux chosen to be the free reliable replacement for Windows XP when MS chose to abandon this platform, Linux would be seeing great success on the desktop today. But Linux chose to go head-to-head with the high-fashion gimmicks of Windows8 and OSX/iOS, while being vastly worse in every important metric BUT cost.
Now the world awaits Android-for-Desktops, assuming Google intends to give power-users the first decent free OS when ARM goes mains-powered and 64-bit in 2014. Non-Android Linux is a massive joke (for ordinary desktop use), and the joke is only getting funnier as infighting takes the focus further and further from what the customer base actually needs. XP was a sitting target, trivial to equal, but Linux has no desire to be any type of practical alternative.
Apple is in the type of decline sheeple can NEVER understand. Sheeple only see market share, and the current power of a company. Apple is at the height of its powers, but failing in every way to build a sustainable future. It's iPAD Air was an extraordinary feat of engineering, that makes the flop product from MS and Intel, the Surface Pro 2, look like the primitive, badly engineered, over-priced piece of garbage it is. But the Surface Pro 2 is not even close to being a competitor in the marketplace. The 'competition' is ever cheaper, ever better, good-enough for 99.9% of users Android tablets.
The tablet market, now the budget hardware is much better, is becoming increasingly price-sensitive. Worse, if tablet owners EVER care about AAA GPU performance, Apple will be forced to return to using Nvidia and/or AMD parts, eliminating its current tech advantage. If tablet owners don't ultimately care about GPU performance, non-Apple tablets will be seen as having equivalent performance at MUCH lower prices.
Of course, Apple's own ARM chip design department is really there to ELIMINATE Intel from all Apple devices, including Laptops and desktops. Even while this hasn't happened, Apple can use their in-house design team to strong-arm better prices from Intel.
In the near future, good tablets and quite powerful PCs are going to have to get very much cheaper. Consumer grade computing hardware will no longer command any where near current average prices. The value of the OS, regardless of who provides it, is going to have to drop well below TEN dollars. Today, MS should be giving away the rotten OS called RT for free to attempt to build market-share, but MS is too thick to understand this.
Was this ever even really a concern? Any person running Linux on a Mac is not doing it because of the cost of the OS (which comes included with the hardware anyway). It's cool that Apple is making their upgrades free, but even $30 for previous upgrades is not that expensive if it's something you want or need.
/* No Comment */
If OSX really wants to be a threat to linux, then they need to have apt or rpm repositories of pre-built open source software for OSX. That MIGHT make me think about booting OSX again. Maybe.
Not like you can download, legally, an ISO of the OS-X install disk and use that to install OS-X on any machine. You still need to buy an expensive Mac computer, so honestly, I'd say they just say it's free, but you still paid for it by buying the more expensive hardware.
you've tried Homebrew? http://brew.sh/
OSX mavericks is free — as in beer; but not free as in speech.
linux is free (as in speech), but may not be free as in beer (since open source companies typically charge for services and not software).
OSX is free (as in beer). but only employs 'free as in speech' to parts of the whole system — they lockdown the engine, and use & contribute to open source — significantly, the darwin kernel is actually open source, and they use open protocols (xml).
either of these is still better than windows 8.1 (which still uses closed NT filesystem, no open source kernel — and windows hood, and document formats are all bolted shut).
Teenagers use Linux because its free and trendy.
Adults use Linux because they prefer it, not because its $0 cost.
If you're still concerned about the 'cost' of purchasing an OS license as an adult, you need to seriously take a look around you at the real cost of a license for something like OSX or Windows (even the $350 style windows licenses) versus the rest of the shit you do in your life.
If you're bitching about software licensing costs, you're ignorant of the cost compared to what it does for you and how it compares to other things that accomplish the same task for you.
Seriously, software licesing is nothing. $2,000 for a copy of Adobe Creative Suite is fucking pocket change considering a days work will pay for it. A Windows Server license SHOULD pay for itself in just a few days or you're business/service has already failed, even with a massive server farm.
If you're asking if the Free OSX upgrade or Free Windows 8.1 upgrade is a threat to Linux, what you're actually doing is telling everyone you're not qualified to ask the question in the first place.
If you're using Linux because of its cost of license rather than a technical reason, you've already failed in at least 8 different ways.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
So ... theres this thing ... its called the app store ... try it, it has pre-built packages, even some open source!
Of course there are also several other ways to get OSS binaries on your system, such as ports. Do you even own a Mac or are you just so fucking stupid that you're not aware that these things have existed for nearly 10 years already?
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
I am running xubuntu on a retina because I prefer the Linux environment. There are a lot of comfort points for me in linux that are not present in OSX. I like the terminals, the command line, the mouse handling, the cut/pasting better in linux. I like the easy free software availability. And there are a lot of pain points in OSX.
Granted, sound is still a pain in linux even after all these years, but I like to live in linux better than OSX.
You mean like MacPorts that has been around for 11 years?
You still have to fork over a lot of cash to get the machine that runs it! And why should they charge for OS X when iOS is free? You still have to buy apple's device in that case too.
No, sorry, he did not INVENT anything. Operating Systems were nothing new. Kernels were nothing new. Most of what he did was not new. It was just his own implementation.
Implementing a known, existing technology with your own flavors added is not invention.
I doubt Apple is really bothered about being a threat to Linux.
For the server market, Linux and Windows largely have this tied up. For the enterprise desktop market (excluding pros), Microsoft largely has this tied up. Apple's computers with the exception of the Mac Pro are aimed at the consumer market - those people who have disposable income and are cool with spending an extra $100 or so to get a Mac.
Backup not found: (A)bort (R)etry (P)anic
Fails for the desktop user, Ubuntu failed.
I supported it but they didn't do a good job, and have nothing new to offer...
It's a damn shame but too bad..
I'm struggling to comprehend why people are making such a big deal out of Apple's free upgrade. This is no different than what Microsoft has been doing for well over a decade, offering service pack upgrades for free.
I'm convinced that the fundamental motivation behind Mavericks being free was because of the recent release of Windows 8.1. That was billed as a fairly substantial update compared to Mavericks which, at least superficially, hasn't changed a whole lot. Apple wouldn't have come out of this looking good if they had charged for it.
Linux has nothing to do with any of this.
According to our experience every installer version since Leopard upgraded the previous version without checking anything except for Apple hardware. iTunes doesn't care. Our institution eventually paid for OS upgrade licenses once a year, but by that time we already had the latest version installed. It seems to be Apple policy to move users to the latest OS version whether you pay for it or not. Now they are just making it official for the latest upgrade.
Apple likely found that making OSX for free is cheaper than applying a marketing campaign for it. If it's free, it will spread easily word of mouth and through automated updates--that's free advertising compared to superbowl commercials.
Apple allowed PC users to buy and install Mac OS X.
I'd like an actual good looking, functional desktop for a change without fragmentation.
oh boi...didn't mean to fan the flames...maybe you're not...let's see were you're going with this...
fanboi alter!
caught you...
Linux is industry standard on W, Y, & Z...the only thing it doesn't do is X.
Where X = what 99% of computer end users do on a computer
understand this: it's not good enough...it's just not...
and maybe: now that M$ is dying its slow death the desktop OS won't be bottlenecked for irrational profit...maybe the big companies will eventually **release the desktop for free**
just accept it...move forward
Thank you Dave Raggett
Wasn't the standard line from Apple that they always wanted to give away updates for free, but shucks, Sarbanes-Oxley prevented them from doing so?
I guess Apple finally found an accountant that could make it happen...
Guess people haven't read the fine print. If you don't own a copy of the Mac OS, then you don't get the new OS X. You have to BUY Apple hardware to get the new operating system or currently own a a system running certain versions to then upgrade. Free would mean I could download it and install it without purchasing anything.
The question of OS X vs Linux is a troll's ploy, and a pretty transparent one at that.
Consider instead that Mavericks is to Mountain Lion as Windows 7 is to Vista. Each is based on it's predecessor, but has significantly improved feature sets. But Mac owners can go to Mavericks for free. PC owners upgraded to Windows 7 for approx $200.00 USD to get the "ultimate" edition (i.e. the only one that actually compares with Mavericks).
Flame on!
Not really. I use Macs because I cannot stand Window's interfaces (any of them) nor Linux's. That said, I do a fair amount of development for Linux. I'm not impressed. I generally switch back to Mac when I need decent guis for apps. Once I'm done creating the new widgets (C++, etc), I use the Breakstone gui for svn and then do an svn update on Linux and off we go into linking, compiling, and debugging hell.
That article jerked around from one disjoint topic to another, and appears to have been written by someone who is functionally illiterate in computer technology.
Yes. In other words, an Apple Hater.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Linux is no threat on the Desktop to um anything.
in the same manner:
Linux =! Android
Android is a fork of Linux...wouldn't you say?
at a certain point the hands who do the work change the FOSS so much that it has become its own fork....good to see others here on /. are thinking the same way I am
Thank you Dave Raggett
Technically I first started reading on July 11, 2000 when I heard the co-founder of Gnutella testify before congress and mention slashdot...
I was a Congressional intern and I snuck in the press box (obv b/c of Metallica and Fanning it was packed). These were the days were an Intern badge meant that you could pretty much go anywhere, because you were so insignificant. We were sort of purposefully overlooked. Lewinsky & the Patriot Act ruined that forever :/
Gene Kan, a co-founder of the Gnutella project just came in and PWNed the whole situation like a boss...the sum of the moment, with all the ways Napster changed the industry, really had a profound effect on my career.
He said that from a technical perspective, Gnutella essentially made the Judiciary's current plans pointless. I was headed for a career in the Air Force but the energy and weight of the moment always stuck with me.
Here's a .pdf of the transcript...it's a great read...Lars is an asshole: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-106shrg74728/pdf/CHRG-106shrg74728.pdf
I started reading /. daily after that but I didn't comment until around 2004 or so when I felt I could actually add value...before that I browsed as an AC.
Thank you Dave Raggett
People tend to forget Linus does very little "desktop" OS work, and hasn't for a very long time. He is a "nuts and bolt" guy, who'd rather be knee deep in developing the kernel itself and interesting technologies at the source code level. That's about as far away from Apple's new shiny happy personal device desktop as you can get. Apple had a brief go at getting OSX officially certified "UNIX" during the Intel switchover heyday (like maybe 2007-2009), but that was a few versions ago and then Apple stopped selling servers or even supporting OSX as a server since then.
If there's any ill effects, it's that the armchair Geek set is floating away with OSX and those of us that work in IT are further away from it at home than ever... It's Microsoft mopping up lately. So when Microsoft comes for your IT department, we've all been playing with out iPads and iPhones too long to care about recompiling out Linux and Microsoft's slick suits swipe the bosses business away from "real" computing like HP or IBM.
Given the way that the OS has grown, I don't blame them. In fact, at this point, the only OS that should have 32-bit at all should be XP, earlier Linuxes/BSDs, and Minix. One thing you could try out would be Minix 3.2 - the version that now comes w/ NetBSD userland. The OS would have a really small memory footprint, since it's a microkernel, and you could then run anything that runs on NetBSD on it.
During the time that I had Linux on a laptop, this is what I ran into.
I first had RHEL 5, which I had installed, and came with no sound. So I went to ALSA, downloaded a driver for it, did a 'configure && make && make install', and then ran it. It ran fine. I saved that driver just in case I ever needed to re-install.
Weeks later, I had a hard disk failure on my laptop, so I installed a CD that had some extra applications that I wanted. Now, these apps came as a part of a CD which had an RHEL 5 based distro, called Maximum Linux. So I installed it, again sound didn't work, so I copied the ALSA file I had and tried the 'configure && make && make install'.
Guess what? Didn't work. I had to go back to ALSA, download a few more versions, and try compiling different ones to see whether they worked. Finally one did, but gave pretty mediocre sound. The laptop in question? A Lenovo. Bottom line - one has to do quite a bit of digging, and matching the exact ALSA version w/ the exact kernel version in order to get the combination to work. Or else, one is SOL.
I agree with the GP. There are a lot of things about Linux that are good. Sound isn't one of them.
According to the page you linked, a Mac mini needs to be a lot newer than an iMac to run Mavericks. People who bought a Mac mini between mid-2007 and early 2009 are out of luck.
The increase in adoption on supercomputers has come to a standstill also (flat line). There is no increase in market share possible.
By injecting their malicious code.
Posted anonymously because pedants aren't appreciated.
I'll state publicly, under my account, that I appreciate pendents.
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Since when does free have the provision that you have already paid for it? For the cost of Apple's products you have paid way over what the OS cost. All for a crappy computer that looks cooler than a PC, here's my $1000+ for my pretty computer can I have my free OS now? Congrats. Same problem with 8.1, you had to have purchased 8 to upgrade to 8.1... So free? Duh. At least when you purchased an OEM system Win8 was pre-installed 'free'.
I know we can get pretty desperate for news in the Linux universe, but how are either of these OSs being 'free' any more of a threat to our minimal market share than they already were? Until we have a show distro to compete with M$ or OSX we won't increase. We are too pampered, so many options yet so many still gripe when you don't like something about one of them. You need to learn that some people actually may not agree with you. Now after that shock, stand up, give yourself a shake and get on with it. I like options, I support what I like and ignore what I don't. In Windows or OSX if you don't like something, well, suck it up buttercup. In Linux, we move to a different DE or if necessary a different distro and it essentially still works the same way so unlike a move from M$ to OSX you don't need to relearn everything you knew. As of now, Ubuntu could be that distro to take market share, partly because of Unity. I don't like Unity but it helped foster all the spin offs with virtually any DE you could want, for the masses that wanted the stability of Ubuntu and apps that are available without what I feel is a bad DE. You don't have to like everything the giant does to appreciate some of the support they bring to the community. The more people they bring to Linux, the better. For the COMMUNITY, not for yourself. More research for our favourite apps, if not our favourite DE/distro. So, stop the hate, suck it up buttercup and take one for the community.
And the output is forcing hdmi audio instead of the headphones. Even after I set the fallback, the settings I choose are getting lost which means it works, just not until I fix it again. So my fix is to use the hardware I didnt intend to use. Im sure that there is a fix for saving the settings I select again and again. I will find it.
Free OS X developers donot compete with Linux developers.
Casteism
And that's why Apple's OS nor Microsoft's will never be a threat to linux. Because the people who know "why linux?" have no price you could pay them to use a non-free non-open-sourced OS.
Sadly, a Libertarian cannot force his views on another, and freedom cannot spread as does the cancer known as religion.