However if you are someone who spends time in the GUI, likes to do things other than just work with their computer and want a mildly pleasing to look at system, then you have plenty of reasons to switch to OS X.
I spend most of my time in GUI (GNOME), although having CLI close my hand all time. I've tried same style in Mac OS X and found it annoying.
One more time, different fonts and colors cannot be a reason to switch a whole OS - switch your theme. Personally, I am fine with most of default and pre-packaged GNOME themes.
The biggest reason of those is the fact that you can run *most* of your UNIX apps in OS X, you can run all the OS X apps, *most* of the classic apps and *most* windows apps too (with VPC).
A big reason I stay with Linux is the fact I can run most of *functions* implemented by Mac OS X and Mac OS X applications (data processing, web development, word processing, slide presentation, graphics, PIM), excluding, probably, just few of them (Video authoring?), which I have to buy anyway for Mac OS X (and therefore such functions are less interesting to me). Mac OS X does not have any missed in Linux functions, which would be reasonable for me to buy.
Besides I cannot really modify Mac OS X (including Aqua), create my own distro and deliver it with my products. Few things can be configured, but not everything. And that is the biggest reason for me to stay with Linux. I need OS not for games, but for real business needs.
I've installed Gentoo. Three times. It broke every time I added something that wasn't part of is packaging scheme.(Have they decided to tell people not to delete Python yet?)
Did you really read the documentation? It is documented that Portage is developed with Python.
I doubt you seriously think that Cocoa/Aqua is the only good GUI, even on Mac hardware platform.
You are right, I am happy to use CLI, it help in lots of situations, when mouse clicking equivalent either is slow work or it is not even implemented yet for such situation.
I am not happy to be limited by only CLI, but either I am not happy how Mac OS X limits my ability when I use CLI in Mac OS X. And I am not happy that I cannot run Cocoa GUI applications remotely from Mac OS X box like I do in X11. No need to repeat that I am not happy that Mac OS X GUI cannot run on other hardware platforms.
And you are not right - I am not only considering GUI, but I intensively use it (GNOME, LyX/TeX, Mozilla, Evolution, OpenOffice, GIMP, Postscript, Xemacs) and develop for it (GDK, */Tk, Web, Java/SWING).
Most Emacs is better, but is *so* complex to configure that unless you cut your teeth on it your are better off not trying
You don't have to configure Xemacs if you don't want to - just install and use. 80% of chance that if you are not mentally capable to configure it then you don't need most of it non-default advanced features. But at hte same time, deafult configuration will allow you 80% of what you want from proffesional development editing environment.
why these "unix geeks" do things that are often the "hard way." Yeah they can do things faster, but only because they stick to what they already know and never learn other ways.
I disagree and have competely opposite observation: "professional mouse clickers" stick to a limited amount of ways how to do things.
as you said, they don't do things like Word Processing or the like. So when they use X11 apps they think they actually are as good as equivalent Windows or Mac apps.
Let me put another way: we do Word Processing. And we do it also in WYSIWIG way. Besides Open Office, I also use LyX - perfect GUI for TeX, which is a professional Word Processing environment (comparing to TeX, MS Word is novices).
And yes I've tried OpenOffice - it just isn't as good IMO
Comparing to TeX, both MS Word and OpenOffice are good only for few paragraph editing. If you want to prepare an article or book for publishing - better use TeX.
The hardware is too slow and overpriced.
Here you go. You stick to one hardware vendor and don't want to learn anything else. Not Linux/Unix geeks.
Further every edition of OSX gets better and better.
Not comparing to fast developing Linux.
I can't wait until their new file system is out.
For a lot of features, especially kernel related, in OSX you will forever wait when something new is out, because you will see at first on Linux:)
Better power management (crucial for me, with a TiG4 DVI)
Try Gentoo - it is known as well working with power on Macs.
Quake 3 !
Not an argument for unix geeks - they either don't play it or they run it on Linux:)
EXCELLENT 1392 support. Linux is still flaky at times with many devices.
If you mean 1394 (firewire) then Vist zip 250 and Sony DV are perfectly fine working firewire devices on both Linux/x86 and Linux/ppc boxes for me.
Cocoa API. This is a *REAL* serious reason
That's not a reason at all: I cannot run Cocoa applications on the other hardware platforms, most of my customers do not have Macs and I am not a marketing guy to force them to pay money to Steve Jobs. Web is the best GUI for information applications. Of course you disagree if you are a graphic designer, but we are talking about Unix geeks, remember?
First-rate font and color support.
Fonts? Colors? I don't know many of Unix geeks who cares about it. In my application I separate design and data aspects, so web designer can fix any style if dislike it.
Nice anti-aliasing isn't just eye-candy, it's great for extended-duration viewing, imho.
One more time - who cares about fonts. I can read and that's enough.
Now, let me try to convince you to install Gentoo. Right now you can enjoy clustering, advanced file systems, amazing amounts of available open source software that you can use to prototype or integrate your applications.
If it is not enough then don't worry and don't rush, wait for few more months and meanwhile read about RANDR? Read and think. And think different. Ask yourself - can Cocoa do such new stuff?
I agree with Sun: "The network is the computer". But I can add: for years in X11 the network is the computer including the display. With RANDR even more - you will be able to migrate the window of your application from display on one computer to display on ANOTHER computer without interrupting the process of execution? I guess Cocoa cannot do it and will never do it - Cocoa GUI is not network compatible at all, is it?
Pay your attention that RANDR is not new rebuild from scratch X11, it's just a small X extension. And not proprietary, by the way:)
Can Cocoa have different windows simultaniously with different resolution and color depth? If you are GUI designer that might be a nice and useful feature for you.
Finally, can Cocoa rotate the screen on the fly?
Snobs care about style of fonts. Geeks care about more amazing things.
No more/dev/dsp clusterfuck. No more wondering how to turn on anti-aliased fonts in X... or did you only enable them for GTK apps... or was that KDE aps...
Who cares about sounds and fonts - it's not needed for real tasks of typical unix geeks.
Well, if your looking for an OS to run a datacenter with, OS X is not your best choice. But is you use a GUI to interface with other machines, it is.
I have to remind you - if I need GUI to interface other X11 machines then OS X is not my best friend.
And then I met OS X. I'm not going to list the 101 reasons why I'm in love
Moreover, it's useless to discuss why we love something. It's useful to understand why we don't - that would be a reason either to switch to some alternative or to fix a problem.
you owe it to yourself to spend a week with it and find out what the hype is about
I've spend totally few months for Mac OS X. Enough to me to switch back to Linux/PPC.
I do extensive GUI work in java and web application design in Dreamweaver
Neither the article nor my comment is for you - you are not a Unix geek, you are a web designer and/or developer. I doubt that before that article you did your web job on any Unix box. And if you did - no wonder you've switched to Mac OS X. Although I know some web designers and java developers who still keep on their Unix/X11 workplaces Emacs/JDE and GIMP.
Actually it's not just funny. At some point our company has considered Palm-alike embedded architecture for one of our products, which in fact is a sort of PC with reduced set of functions, exactly "public access informational station". Most of our installations are PC based as i most cases a noise is OK. But some customers require very silent equipment and that's why we've been considering Palm. Then, after balancing available functions, their quality, noise and cost, we've decided to stay with PC. But who knows, in future we may reconsider it.
Interesting article. It shows that *IF* I decide to move from Unix (actually from my Linux/PPC) to Mac OS X *THEN* I know where to get a help. But it doesn't help to answer to the question, which logically comes first: *WHY* should I migrate from Unix/Linux to Mac OS X.
Remember? I am a Unix geek and as such I don't buy any eye candy. Normally I deal with serious data processing stuff. And I don't buy hardware args as a reason - I've already got G4 to run Gentoo Linux.
Oracle is patch production company. Even new features are implemented just as patches.
As a result, Oracle quality getting worse even fatser than quality of Microsoft. At least Redmond guys re-write some code from time to time. Oracle just applies patches.
No wonder that you still can sometimes swap selected fields in a SELECT statement and Oracle will cancel the query with internal error code. I remeber they've been trying to fix it since v6.0, but the bug has been appeared again and again.
Oracle is another example where the core doesn't care a bit about a product architecture, they care only about new features and the strategy is just to hire more and more developers to produce patches and test them.
Of course, while the army of developers is managing patches, the army of DBA's is managing that peace of work on the field.
"As long as there were no machines, programming was no problem at all; when we had a few weak computers, programming became a mild problem and now that we have gigantic computers, programming has become an equally gigantic problem. In this sense the electronic industry has not solved a single problem, it has only created them -- it has created the problem of using its product." - E.W. Dijkstra Turing Award Lecture, 1972
What is the OS installed on such a small computer? I beleive it is Linux.
Seriously, MS Windows is too big, even Windows CE is too big comparing how Linux can shrunk.
I guess BSD doesn't have any chances in IBM products because BSDL is not viral enough - and that was IBM requires to protect IP of their contributions to the OS.
And no doubts that Java will no way work on such micro devices.
Server room? You might be surprised, but each time I've got the legacy system from previous software architect - I have same picures, while trying to restore any diagrams in order to document the system.
Personally, I am surprised how all it still works.
What's wrong with Midnight Commander (mc)? IMHO the best file manager I've ever used. It is fast on any platform. It keeps my CLI exactly where I need it. It's still well compatible with GUI environment (if available) in order to open files/programs. And it is intuitively clear.
Mac Finder, MS Explorer, Nautilus - all of them are too heavy for simple file operations: copy, move, delete, open. Besides, my arm is painfully sick from crazy mouse manipulations I have to do for simple file operations. And all such GUI doesn't bring any additional value comparing to ncurses-based mc.
Speaking about mouse, watch what Photoshop professionals use - keyboard shortcuts. When you need a speed - keyboard is your best friend and mouse is your enimy.
I cannot search in DB in 1 TB DB - it's too big for me. I know how to do it and I am capable to do it in several records, but for 1 TB search I need good DBMS. That's what is DBMS for.
I know how to write programs of some class on some low-level language (Assembly, C, Java, XML). And I do it ok when I need few such programs, or doesens. But when I need thousands or millions of such programs I create (or download, or buy) a compiler or an interpreter from some meta-language to that target language. That's what compilers and interpreters are needed for.
You don't surprise of using C or Java compiler, or Python or Perl interpretor, or even XSLT. Why do you surprise when it comes to higher level where it's usually (today) called AI?
i'm sure apple has given schools hardware discounts as well, otherwise they would have never gotten imacs over pcs
No need in discount - just pay some commissions, usually several times smaller than any noticable discount, you gets the deal, a school gets its computers and the govt doesn't care a sheet about it. That's they way how most of titans are winning their govt contracts. And that's pissing me off.
there is no such thing as "reliable enough" on Wall Street.
I worked for Wall Street company. And I know (not from news articles) that both Oracle and Sybase are just reliable enough. They are crashing. They are freezing. There are cases of loosing data. There are core dumps. There are problems with replication and backup. There are log messages "Internal DBMS Error. Call Oracle Customer Support". And all that after paying and using a lot of Oracle Customer Support. Our partners said (of course unofficially) the same about Sybase.
We signed NDA with Oracle that such info would not be released.
There is no such thing as "absolutely reliable DBMS" (true for all software). You need more reliability - you invest more money into replicated standalone instances, backup, monitoring tools with ATP on application level, support contracts with NOC, night shifts, pagers and so on. And you do it with any DBMS.
With such investments any DBMS, if it is generally reliable enough (at least with ACID, replication and backup), will be reliable enough to satisfy specific reliablity requirements. Any, including modern DB/2, MS SQL and PostgreSQL. Not MySQL - lack of ACID. And not *old* PostgreSQL or *old* any other DBMS (even old Oracle) - lack of replication.
Same thing about OS. Yes, you can count Solaris as more reliable than Linux. But it's not absolute reliable either. And it is not even THAT more reliable than Linux, counting all investment you put around your Sun boxes, which are still freezing and crashing. I and my friends in other companies estimated that about 40% of all Sun boxes, from Sun-10 to E-4500, will stop from hardware temporary or permanent problem within as long as 1 year.
So, again - you invest a lot of money for hardware redundancy, while thinking - why Sun, why I cannot invest the equal or less amount of money to x86 and ultimately have same or more of reliablity? For example, I (and other guys) are not so frustruted with Compaq. Well, for top server we still stick to Sun.
Conclusion: when you buy very reliable solution (DBMS, OS, hardware), remember - that just the begining of you investment to reliablity. Ultimately there is no guarantee that you invest less money for the same level of reliability buying commercial product vs OSS.
Today Wall Street lives mostly on Sybase (of course with some Oracle installation base as well). Historically, Sybase has been supporting better (than Oracle) bulk (batch) operations, which is critical for real-time data feed processing.
Once Wall Street will recognize that Linux is deployed already with very free, very programmable, fast enough and reliable enough DBMS (actually ORDBMS) PostgreSQL - then Oracle won't have much of chances either.
I've got it! I can take GPL software, modify it, license under dual GPL/MPL, modify it again and finally sell without any sources. That's the way to get rid from GPL virus, isn't it?
Emacs, very enriched application with LOTS of functionality is mostly written on Lisp (the interpreter is embedded into Emacs). Newcoming TeXmacs is written same way on Guile. Guile is used to extend other applications, such as Sawfish window manager and GIMP.
You don't have anything close to it written/extended with JavaScript. The language is really very weak in all its parts: OOP, typing, macros, reflection.
Java is not a choice: too heavy, still too buggy. But the most important it's a compiler. The extention language must be able to interprete the source code directly. Besides, JVM is a proprietary property, it cannot be distributed with free software, especially it's compiler.
As alternative to Lisp (which is really not for everybody - it's only for educated persons) I see Python. Are you happy with Python? Some high-order programming, scripting interpreter, optional bytecode compilation is available, fast enough especially in scripting, general purpose language, popular in several OS distributions (i.e. Gentoo). So, Python?:)
I wonder how is it possible that some commercial web browsers based on [modified ] Mozilla source code somehow lost GPL from their licenses? Isn't it in conflict with GPL license terms? For example you cannot download [for free!] the sources of Netscape browser and, as far as I know, it's just Mozilla with some add-ons.
Slashdot Mirror
I spend most of my time in GUI (GNOME), although having CLI close my hand all time. I've tried same style in Mac OS X and found it annoying.
One more time, different fonts and colors cannot be a reason to switch a whole OS - switch your theme. Personally, I am fine with most of default and pre-packaged GNOME themes.
The biggest reason of those is the fact that you can run *most* of your UNIX apps in OS X, you can run all the OS X apps, *most* of the classic apps and *most* windows apps too (with VPC).
A big reason I stay with Linux is the fact I can run most of *functions* implemented by Mac OS X and Mac OS X applications (data processing, web development, word processing, slide presentation, graphics, PIM), excluding, probably, just few of them (Video authoring?), which I have to buy anyway for Mac OS X (and therefore such functions are less interesting to me). Mac OS X does not have any missed in Linux functions, which would be reasonable for me to buy.
Besides I cannot really modify Mac OS X (including Aqua), create my own distro and deliver it with my products. Few things can be configured, but not everything. And that is the biggest reason for me to stay with Linux. I need OS not for games, but for real business needs.
Did you really read the documentation? It is documented that Portage is developed with Python.
You are right, I am happy to use CLI, it help in lots of situations, when mouse clicking equivalent either is slow work or it is not even implemented yet for such situation.
I am not happy to be limited by only CLI, but either I am not happy how Mac OS X limits my ability when I use CLI in Mac OS X. And I am not happy that I cannot run Cocoa GUI applications remotely from Mac OS X box like I do in X11. No need to repeat that I am not happy that Mac OS X GUI cannot run on other hardware platforms.
And you are not right - I am not only considering GUI, but I intensively use it (GNOME, LyX/TeX, Mozilla, Evolution, OpenOffice, GIMP, Postscript, Xemacs) and develop for it (GDK, */Tk, Web, Java/SWING).
why these "unix geeks" do things that are often the "hard way." Yeah they can do things faster, but only because they stick to what they already know and never learn other ways.
I disagree and have competely opposite observation: "professional mouse clickers" stick to a limited amount of ways how to do things.
as you said, they don't do things like Word Processing or the like. So when they use X11 apps they think they actually are as good as equivalent Windows or Mac apps.
Let me put another way: we do Word Processing. And we do it also in WYSIWIG way. Besides Open Office, I also use LyX - perfect GUI for TeX, which is a professional Word Processing environment (comparing to TeX, MS Word is novices).
And yes I've tried OpenOffice - it just isn't as good IMO
Comparing to TeX, both MS Word and OpenOffice are good only for few paragraph editing. If you want to prepare an article or book for publishing - better use TeX.
The hardware is too slow and overpriced.
Here you go. You stick to one hardware vendor and don't want to learn anything else. Not Linux/Unix geeks.
Further every edition of OSX gets better and better.
Not comparing to fast developing Linux.
I can't wait until their new file system is out.
For a lot of features, especially kernel related, in OSX you will forever wait when something new is out, because you will see at first on Linux :)
Try Gentoo - it is known as well working with power on Macs.
Quake 3 !
Not an argument for unix geeks - they either don't play it or they run it on Linux :)
EXCELLENT 1392 support. Linux is still flaky at times with many devices.
If you mean 1394 (firewire) then Vist zip 250 and Sony DV are perfectly fine working firewire devices on both Linux/x86 and Linux/ppc boxes for me.
Cocoa API. This is a *REAL* serious reason
That's not a reason at all: I cannot run Cocoa applications on the other hardware platforms, most of my customers do not have Macs and I am not a marketing guy to force them to pay money to Steve Jobs. Web is the best GUI for information applications. Of course you disagree if you are a graphic designer, but we are talking about Unix geeks, remember?
First-rate font and color support.
Fonts? Colors? I don't know many of Unix geeks who cares about it. In my application I separate design and data aspects, so web designer can fix any style if dislike it.
Nice anti-aliasing isn't just eye-candy, it's great for extended-duration viewing, imho.
One more time - who cares about fonts. I can read and that's enough.
Now, let me try to convince you to install Gentoo. Right now you can enjoy clustering, advanced file systems, amazing amounts of available open source software that you can use to prototype or integrate your applications.
If it is not enough then don't worry and don't rush, wait for few more months and meanwhile read about RANDR? Read and think. And think different. Ask yourself - can Cocoa do such new stuff?
I agree with Sun: "The network is the computer". But I can add: for years in X11 the network is the computer including the display. With RANDR even more - you will be able to migrate the window of your application from display on one computer to display on ANOTHER computer without interrupting the process of execution? I guess Cocoa cannot do it and will never do it - Cocoa GUI is not network compatible at all, is it?
Pay your attention that RANDR is not new rebuild from scratch X11, it's just a small X extension. And not proprietary, by the way :)
Can Cocoa have different windows simultaniously with different resolution and color depth? If you are GUI designer that might be a nice and useful feature for you.
Finally, can Cocoa rotate the screen on the fly?
Snobs care about style of fonts. Geeks care about more amazing things.
When you discuss the process of shifting from one technology to another then you cannot avoid any advocacy.
Who cares about sounds and fonts - it's not needed for real tasks of typical unix geeks.
I have to remind you - if I need GUI to interface other X11 machines then OS X is not my best friend.
And then I met OS X. I'm not going to list the 101 reasons why I'm in love
Moreover, it's useless to discuss why we love something. It's useful to understand why we don't - that would be a reason either to switch to some alternative or to fix a problem.
you owe it to yourself to spend a week with it and find out what the hype is about
I've spend totally few months for Mac OS X. Enough to me to switch back to Linux/PPC.
Neither the article nor my comment is for you - you are not a Unix geek, you are a web designer and/or developer. I doubt that before that article you did your web job on any Unix box. And if you did - no wonder you've switched to Mac OS X. Although I know some web designers and java developers who still keep on their Unix/X11 workplaces Emacs/JDE and GIMP.
And is there anything specially useful (besides any eye candy) in Office on Mac OS X compare to Open Office on X11?
Actually it's not just funny. At some point our company has considered Palm-alike embedded architecture for one of our products, which in fact is a sort of PC with reduced set of functions, exactly "public access informational station". Most of our installations are PC based as i most cases a noise is OK. But some customers require very silent equipment and that's why we've been considering Palm. Then, after balancing available functions, their quality, noise and cost, we've decided to stay with PC. But who knows, in future we may reconsider it.
Remember? I am a Unix geek and as such I don't buy any eye candy. Normally I deal with serious data processing stuff. And I don't buy hardware args as a reason - I've already got G4 to run Gentoo Linux.
So, is there any *REAL* serious reason?
How about Beowulf of Palm Pilot PDAs?
But what is really silent is my PDA. The only problem is its lack of memory :)
As a result, Oracle quality getting worse even fatser than quality of Microsoft. At least Redmond guys re-write some code from time to time. Oracle just applies patches.
No wonder that you still can sometimes swap selected fields in a SELECT statement and Oracle will cancel the query with internal error code. I remeber they've been trying to fix it since v6.0, but the bug has been appeared again and again.
Oracle is another example where the core doesn't care a bit about a product architecture, they care only about new features and the strategy is just to hire more and more developers to produce patches and test them.
Of course, while the army of developers is managing patches, the army of DBA's is managing that peace of work on the field.
"As long as there were no machines, programming was no problem at all; when we had a few weak computers, programming became a mild problem and now that we have gigantic computers, programming has become an equally gigantic problem. In this sense the electronic industry has not solved a single problem, it has only created them -- it has created the problem of using its product." - E.W. Dijkstra Turing Award Lecture, 1972
Seriously, MS Windows is too big, even Windows CE is too big comparing how Linux can shrunk.
I guess BSD doesn't have any chances in IBM products because BSDL is not viral enough - and that was IBM requires to protect IP of their contributions to the OS.
And no doubts that Java will no way work on such micro devices.
Personally, I am surprised how all it still works.
Mac Finder, MS Explorer, Nautilus - all of them are too heavy for simple file operations: copy, move, delete, open. Besides, my arm is painfully sick from crazy mouse manipulations I have to do for simple file operations. And all such GUI doesn't bring any additional value comparing to ncurses-based mc.
Speaking about mouse, watch what Photoshop professionals use - keyboard shortcuts. When you need a speed - keyboard is your best friend and mouse is your enimy.
I know how to write programs of some class on some low-level language (Assembly, C, Java, XML). And I do it ok when I need few such programs, or doesens. But when I need thousands or millions of such programs I create (or download, or buy) a compiler or an interpreter from some meta-language to that target language. That's what compilers and interpreters are needed for.
You don't surprise of using C or Java compiler, or Python or Perl interpretor, or even XSLT. Why do you surprise when it comes to higher level where it's usually (today) called AI?
No need in discount - just pay some commissions, usually several times smaller than any noticable discount, you gets the deal, a school gets its computers and the govt doesn't care a sheet about it. That's they way how most of titans are winning their govt contracts. And that's pissing me off.
I worked for Wall Street company. And I know (not from news articles) that both Oracle and Sybase are just reliable enough. They are crashing. They are freezing. There are cases of loosing data. There are core dumps. There are problems with replication and backup. There are log messages "Internal DBMS Error. Call Oracle Customer Support". And all that after paying and using a lot of Oracle Customer Support. Our partners said (of course unofficially) the same about Sybase.
We signed NDA with Oracle that such info would not be released.
There is no such thing as "absolutely reliable DBMS" (true for all software). You need more reliability - you invest more money into replicated standalone instances, backup, monitoring tools with ATP on application level, support contracts with NOC, night shifts, pagers and so on. And you do it with any DBMS.
With such investments any DBMS, if it is generally reliable enough (at least with ACID, replication and backup), will be reliable enough to satisfy specific reliablity requirements. Any, including modern DB/2, MS SQL and PostgreSQL. Not MySQL - lack of ACID. And not *old* PostgreSQL or *old* any other DBMS (even old Oracle) - lack of replication.
Same thing about OS. Yes, you can count Solaris as more reliable than Linux. But it's not absolute reliable either. And it is not even THAT more reliable than Linux, counting all investment you put around your Sun boxes, which are still freezing and crashing. I and my friends in other companies estimated that about 40% of all Sun boxes, from Sun-10 to E-4500, will stop from hardware temporary or permanent problem within as long as 1 year.
So, again - you invest a lot of money for hardware redundancy, while thinking - why Sun, why I cannot invest the equal or less amount of money to x86 and ultimately have same or more of reliablity? For example, I (and other guys) are not so frustruted with Compaq. Well, for top server we still stick to Sun.
Conclusion: when you buy very reliable solution (DBMS, OS, hardware), remember - that just the begining of you investment to reliablity. Ultimately there is no guarantee that you invest less money for the same level of reliability buying commercial product vs OSS.
Once Wall Street will recognize that Linux is deployed already with very free, very programmable, fast enough and reliable enough DBMS (actually ORDBMS) PostgreSQL - then Oracle won't have much of chances either.
I've got it! I can take GPL software, modify it, license under dual GPL/MPL, modify it again and finally sell without any sources. That's the way to get rid from GPL virus, isn't it?
You don't have anything close to it written/extended with JavaScript. The language is really very weak in all its parts: OOP, typing, macros, reflection.
Java is not a choice: too heavy, still too buggy. But the most important it's a compiler. The extention language must be able to interprete the source code directly. Besides, JVM is a proprietary property, it cannot be distributed with free software, especially it's compiler.
As alternative to Lisp (which is really not for everybody - it's only for educated persons) I see Python. Are you happy with Python? Some high-order programming, scripting interpreter, optional bytecode compilation is available, fast enough especially in scripting, general purpose language, popular in several OS distributions (i.e. Gentoo). So, Python? :)
I wonder how is it possible that some commercial web browsers based on [modified ] Mozilla source code somehow lost GPL from their licenses? Isn't it in conflict with GPL license terms? For example you cannot download [for free!] the sources of Netscape browser and, as far as I know, it's just Mozilla with some add-ons.