Could Apple's Intel Desktop Threaten Linux? 818
esavard writes "
If Linux enthusiasts don't want
Mac OSX on Intel to become a threat
for the future of Linux Desktop, they must rethink the concept of Desktop as we know it today.
Symphony OS did exactly that and propose some fresh concepts about how a desktop should and should not be.
If you want to know more about Symphony OS, a good starting point is a Wikipedia article
describing the innovations proposed by this new desktop OS. The Linux Desktop Community must encourage such initatives
massively to compete against Mac OSX and Windows."
Beautiful (Score:5, Insightful)
The one thing that stands out at me is that Symphony uses Yet Another(TM) packaging system that is supposed to fix all the woes of the previous packaging system. Haven't we learned yet? In a complex system, packages are just as bad (actually worse) for users than DLL Hell. And they certainly don't solve the issue of maintaining the sanctity of applications, and maintaining file associations across deletes/manual installs/program moves. These are some of the greatest break points in the Windows OS. Yet Mac OS X has none of these problems thanks to its amazing
Under OS X, installation consists of downloading the application, and optionally extracting it from an archive. That's it, nothing more. You can run the app from any location (although the "standard" is the Applications folder), including right out of the DMG archive! File associations are easy: Just have the program on your hard drive. That's it! The OS takes care of querying the program for its associations. If you move the program, the OS knows. And if you delete the program, the OS removes the association. No mucking around with manual configuration. The *only* thing you can change is the default program!
Given that OS X has shown us the power of this method, why haven't any distros latched onto it? Yes, it means that the OS must promise a base set of shared libraries, but the user experience is so much better!
A Mystery Wrapped in an Enigma... (Score:4, Insightful)
Wow.... (Score:2, Insightful)
DUPE (Score:1, Insightful)
Only if (Score:4, Insightful)
x86 != PC (Score:5, Insightful)
This is no threat to linux , Apple are going to keep with their custom hardware and linux for A-x86 will spring up and take over in a few years from linux for PPC (well not totally )
Linux Desktop (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Wow.... (Score:1, Insightful)
Considering that Linux is a ground up copy of Minux, which is a ground up rewrite of a simplistic System V system, which traces its roots all the way back to K&R, with a very brief stopover at BSD for a bunch of tech, whereas OS X is a direct derivitive of Mach/FreeBSD 5.x, I fail to see how they're close relatives. Unless, that is, you are referring to the large amount of BSD technology used at various points in Linux's life?
Truthfully, I don't think anyone is threatening anyone else. Mac OS X has always been attractive to Unix lovers because of its excellent ability as a desktop/laptop/workstation operating system. This is an area that Linux is really unable to compete, despite its best efforts. Similarly, OS X doesn't really compete in the server arena despite its best efforts. This will probably change in the future, but Apple moving to Intel will have no effect on the status of relations between Linux and OS X.
Re:Agree (Score:2, Insightful)
Each of those you listed is an ATTEMPT to make "one graphics layer for all applications".
It's just no one can agree on which one to use.
(Social problem, not technological).
Next... (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh yeah? Why is that? Why does it matter if Mac OSX uses Intel or PowerPC or Transmeta for that matter? Apple will still lock their platform, still charge too much for accessories (such as RAM), still take 20 years to develop a 2-button mouse.
Tell me, fearmonger, why should I start running down the streets in panic?
Threat to which desktop... (Score:3, Insightful)
Kjella
Re:Agree (Score:2, Insightful)
How? (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not like you'll be able to install it on any old x86 box - you will still have to buy a Mac.
It's just the internals of the black box that will change - the end user won't see any major difference (performance aside).
I don't see how anyone deciding between linux or a mac would be influenced by this change.
Re:Beautiful (Score:1, Insightful)
Well, that power was already avalaible in NeXTstep. I remember arguing in slashdot nearly 10 years ago about that, and 5 years ago with Mac OS 9 zealots.
It is such a simple a great idea. An application is a directory. The GUI treat it as a single object.
But techies don't like it because it is quite conceptually simlar to static linking (the same lib will end up beeing several time in memory). And it is such a simple idea...
And OS 9 junkies hated the fact that this mecanism is based on the file extension...
And of course, *all* the UI have to agree about that, because it is a user-land illusion. Good luck getting gnome, kde agreeing on that...
Linux vs OS X misconceptions (Score:2, Insightful)
Because of the Apple news about switching to Intel chips, I've read a ton of articles stating that this is going to be the end of Linux, or Apple is now trying to compete with Dell or Microsoft directly. It is all a bunch of crap.
Apple has stated that Mac OS X(x86) will only run on Apple Hardware. So, really the only thing this changes is that Apple will be able to put out better performing Macs in the future. There are competitive issues when comparing processor speed and architechure that will not be in the equation as much as before, but it doesn't change the business model for Apple, it doesn't change how people will use their hardware. It doesn't change who will buy their hardware. The competitive landscape remains unchanged. They are still built like an appliance, you plug it in and it just works. You may be able to run Windows on them, but why would you buy one for this purpose? It would be cheaper to buy a dell or something like that. If anything, it goes counter culture to the Mac zealots, but they will get over it once the realize, it still looks like a Mac, Sounds like a Mac, works like a Mac; it is still a Mac in the end.
All this speculation is generated by a bunch of journalist, trying to make a buck off the sensationalism of it all. In the end a G4/5 and a x86 chip are designed for the same purpose, and can be used to accomplish the same thing.
my 2 cents.
Ok, I'll bite. (Score:3, Insightful)
The Linux Desktop Community must encourage such initatives massively to compete against Mac OSX and Windows.
Why?
Maybe I'm missing something and /. can enlighten me. I use Linux. OSX gets a lot of fans.
So, exactly how does this involve me at all?
I keep seeing that OSX might become a "threat". How exactly? Will OSX suddenly become self-aware and begin deleting Linux from the entire Internet or something?
Maybe it's just me, but I just don't feel a threat here. They're both fairly posix/unix, so I'm reallly seeing a potential ally here more than anything else.
Re:Beautiful (Score:3, Insightful)
So the major problems here would be settling on some kind of Linux Standard Desktop Base of libraries, and persuading the community that "meta-debs" are a good idea.
A few things (Score:3, Insightful)
2) We don't *want* to do desktops. This, too, should be fairly obvious by the effort ( or lack thereof ) put forth up to this point.
If OSX is a great desktop OS on commodity hardware ( it won't be, but that's the assumption at this point ), why should we spin our wheels coming up with yet another version of the wheel? The focus, I believe, should be server side. We should be making file/print and directory services under linux so damned impressive that no one would want to bother with the MS alternative.
No. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Linux vs. Mac OS X (Score:2, Insightful)
Total bullshit. Nevermind the fact that Linux doesn't have a single entity behind it and can't "want" to be anything. I use both Linux and OS X and find that they are oriented towards different areas. OS X still has long ways to go before being a server-oriented power-user UNIX system (although it tries), although it has the desktop thing down. Linux has ways to go before being a desktop-oriented non-techie-user system although it has the server thing down. And not everyone likes the choice of GUI that Apple rams down your throat. Personally I like a little choice in my user interface, and OS X is very deficient in that area.
If Apple screws up something in their UI (which we saw with Tiger), you are pretty much stuck with it unless they fix it. This is not so much a problem in Linux distros where everything is open source..
Threaten how? (Score:5, Insightful)
Of the dozen or so people I know who've "switched", they've all been linux or *bsd users, and they switched because Apple provides a useable desktop experience that Just Works Out Of The Box.
Of course, these are people with lives who don't like plinking around with their computers just for the hell of it - they use the things to Do Work.
How OSX on x86 and Linux could help each other: (Score:4, Insightful)
However, this is a unquie opportunity for the Linux community and Apple to help one another and both gain a big chunk of Microsoft's userbase.
Imagine if Apple started contributing funds and/or developers to the Wine project [winehq.com], basically doing for Wine what they did for Khtml.
Imagine being able to tell someone that, yes, they can switch to Linux/OSX and still run all their Windows programs/games.
Imagine what that would do for the marketshare of both operating systems.
How can ANYTHING "threaten" Linux? (Score:5, Insightful)
Q: "Could Apple's Intel Desktop Threaten Linux?"
A: No.
The concept of Apple-on-Intel threatening Linux might be valid if Linux was a commercial operating system, sold by a company whose market share and profits might suffer if Apple were to compete successfully against them.
But it isn't.
You can't threaten Linux. If Red Hat and all the other Linux companies were to drop Linux and switch to something else, if Dell, IBM and all the other box suppliers stopped supporting Linux, if all the hardware manufacturers who currently provide Linux drivers for their products all stopped supporting Linux, it still wouldn't be dead. You'd still have people like Torvalds and Cox writing code in their spare time and there'd still be geeks downloading Linux and installing it on old PCs.
Giving people an alternative to Linux isn't a threat - it's a choice. It's freedom of choice and freedom is what Linux is all about.
More and more, we see articles and talk about Linux's market share, whether it's going to be successful on the desktop, whether it's going to be able to compete against Windows, against Solaris, et cetera, et cetera, et ad infinitum cetera.
Linux doesn't compete against Windows, MacOS X or Solaris. Linux vendors, like Red Hat, compete against Microsoft, Apple and Sun. Linux just is. The fact that it's supported by various companies is great but it's not essential for Linux survival. The fact that the amount of people and companies using Linux is huge and growing is terrific, but it's not essential. If everyone, right up to and including Linus abandoned Linux, I'd still be able to dig out my Red Hat CDs and install it on an old PC.
This article is just typical of /. these days - it's a stupid, hype-ridden question, which hundreds of clueless fuckwits will comment inanely on, wasting bandwidth and electrons.
Wake up and take your heads out of your asses.
D.
..is for Don't. Be so. Fucking. Stupid.
Re:Beautiful (Score:3, Insightful)
Ok, why? Why should the user be prevented from having personal programs? There's certainly no restriction against fat binaries, so why not a lightweight binary?
If the concern is system security, than the installtion level is not the place to worry about it. The place to worry about it is at the runtime level. Because a determined cracker will find a way to get a user to execute his program. And once its executed, it is the responsibilty of the runtime system to protect against anything malignant.
Re:Beautiful (Score:5, Insightful)
This seems to boil down to an argument that cathedral-style management of all APIs relevant to third-party applications is necessary if they are to work. Certainly they will be made to work more easily that way.
But from a standpoint of supporting a diverse ecology of software producers and lots of competition, the cathedral isn't the most desirable structure. It seems that when one pays a draconian cost (central control) to solve smaller problems (package dependencies, file locations), it might not be the best deal in the end. I'm still endeavoring to provide a better solution to this problem.
Bruce
Re:Beautiful (Score:1, Insightful)
He meant installing the application in his own home folder.
He even gave an example of a bleeding edge version of Gimp, which he wouldn't want to force on others, only install it for his personal use.
Of course, you can already do that, just compile and install the thing in your own home dir, by tweaking the
Where did you read that "computer security is stupid"?
Until Apple announces OSX for non-Apple machines.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple are staking their entire company on OSX not being pirated to other x86 platforms. OSX will not support any non-Apple hardware, so it's not a threat, unless you count possible increased Apple market share due to lower prices.
Re:Until Apple announces OSX for non-Apple machine (Score:2, Insightful)
This is dead on imo. The situation isn't any different than before, Apple is still tying the OS and hardware. Linux is still free and uses (presumably) cheaper hardware.
This is a story for the sake of having a story.
Re:Beautiful (Score:5, Insightful)
I honestly have never understood this hostility toward the APP scheme. It's a good scheme, that actually *works*, as opposed to packages that constantly *don't*. Yet OSS developers just keep sticking their fingers in their ears and screaming "I can't hear you! La la la! I *like* having a completely unremovable mess of files across the entire system! La la la! I *like* the fact that I'm screwed if my package database should every get lost or corrupted! La la la!"
It's just a... weird... reaction.
Re:Beautiful (Score:3, Insightful)
If I were an IT admin (I'm not - I'm a developer), I'd want to not allow users to install software for that very reason. They install crap like real player or yahoo toolbar or whatever that bog down their machines, then the whine when their machines bog down.
But for home users it's imperitive that they be able to install software and IMO they should not have to be root to do so.
All depends on what your audience is. And that's one of the problems.
Re:Beautiful (Score:2, Insightful)
With a mac, I insert a disk and run an installer. Or drag a file onto my desktop.
For windows I insert a disk and run an installer.
For the average linux distro, let's take an rpm-based one:
First I have to know the difference between no-arch, 386, 586, 686, etc... and download the right rpm.
If I can't figure that out, or if there isn't an rpm for my distro, I have to download the source, un-tar, it, configure, make, and make install.
"no, mom, now type period, slash, no the other slash..."
Then, if that all worked, 9 times out of 10, I'm going to get a message similar to: "lib-blah-blah.1.9 missing..." I'll have to hunt for that.
Then to top it off, once all that is done, I still (99% of the time) have to add the icon to my desktop manually.
This is fine for you and me, but my mom will never figure this out.
"oh but gentoo, emerge...emerge..." right, ok mom, you want solitaire, open a terminal, yeah the black box icon. Now type
Until application developers start packaging dependencies together with their app, linux will not take over the mainstream mom and pop user market. It is just too complicated to install software.
And don't even get me started about trying to make xine play a dvd...
Re:More like, Linux is a threat to Apple (Score:4, Insightful)
Linux will continue to improve, but so will Apple; the question we need to ask is which one will improve faster in the GUI department. In this regard, my money is on Apple, simply because they have near total control over the user interface. They can stand up and say, "the behavior for X will by Y," and that's how it will work. Linux simply does not have this luxury. With Linux, you still have situations where applications work wonderfully with GUI A but have "quirks" if you try using certain features in GUI B, C, or D. Until there's a standard that desktop environment developers agree on and adhere to, you're going to have a fracured desktop experience.
Yes, in another few years, the Linux GUI will quite possibly be as "good" as the Apple GUI is today. You're fooling yourself, though, if you think Steve is gonna sit back and say, "well, that's good enough." The real challenge for Linux GUIs will be to get better faster than Apple can--and I'm not sure they can, for the reasons stated above.
Simple, dumb, and easy :-) (Score:5, Insightful)
I realize this could start a 'flame war', but it surprises me how many Linux users just don't see why package managers are not the greatest thing since sliced bread for average users.
While you and others may go "wow!" at all the magical stuff apt-get does, the average user doesn't even know what dependecies are, nor do they care. And they don't want to care. On Mac, as "simple and dumb" as the OS X system is, it *just works* for everyone from grandma to geeks. A simple and dumb system is also, well, very easy to understand! Drag and drop your app into the folder. Easy. Nice. As for package managers, I've had to deal with scenarios where I had to muck with the package manager configuration to get it to install packages for me, and I've had to "add URLs" to the database at which time I was warned about "untrusted sources" (the average user is NOT going to grok all that). In fact, when the average user sees "no results" from the database, they'll simply conclude the package isn't available and stop. I'm not sure how anyone thinks this is easier than going to versiontracker.com/apple.com/etc. and just downloading a file (or popping in a CD), then dragging the app into the applications folder.
If you doubt me, have someone do usability research on package managers and drag and drop installs, and see which is, on average, easier for users to understand and get working with. If you really think package managers like apt-get will come out ahead, then you must spend a lot of your time on the computer and deal regularly with others like yourself.
If you really want the Linux desktop to succeed, you have to question why lots of people are switching to Mac instead of just 'bashing' anything that is not as complex and elegant as apt-get. Call it dumb, call it simple. I call it a solution that works, and considering Macs are seeing a 40% growth this year, so do a couple other people as well.
As someone whose tried every Windows from 3.1 to XP, close to a dozen Linux distributions (including Debian and Ubuntu), and OS 9 and OS X, I have to say application installation and removal on Mac blows the others away. It works and it's brain-dead simple, which means I spend more time doing real work than fooling around with installers and packaging programs. Good luck on converting the world to apt-get, though.
Re:Beautiful (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, now you point it out is quite stupid.
Now: why is it that my car has a single wheel drive? Only the driver can decide where to go with the car! isn't it plainly stupid?
The things the computer will do are decided by its administrator, just the same the captain of a boat is the single one that decide where the boat will go.
"If *I* want to install a bleeding edge version of Gimp"
Tell it to the administrator, or become administrator yourself.
"I neither want to bother the admin with it"
I promise you will bother even more if you could just go installing software all around. And still, you will probably be able to just compile the Gimp and install within your home directory not needing aid from the sysadmin for that.
"Secondly Debian packages work great, but only for stuff that is in Debian, which might be a lot, but is *far* from everything"
Wrong again. Debian packages will work great for any stuff built "the Debian way" no matter if it comes from Debian repos or not. Well... quite exactly the same with your beloved MacOS/X: it doesn't work too good for binaries not developed for it, does it?
"..and its also often *way* outdated, remember those three year release cycles..."
Debian has not a "three year release cycle" while it is true that last Stable has been so for three years (and still, major versions of any propietary OS -including Apple's, doesn't seem to get the market with higher frecuencies, do they?).
Again, nothing avoids you to produce and distribute your own packages FOR Debian. Heck! then you will prefer a long release cycle in order not to change too much your packages for a long, long time.
And then again, even if you'd be force to change stuff at a fast pace, it is much better when the whole production process is publicly available so you don't have to either wait for The Company to release their new OS version and see then how it breaks your program or sign expensive deals with it in order to have a look to early betas.
"Software packaging should be done by those that provide the software in the first place"
That you will have to tell to software providers; nothing prevents them from doing so. Debian package format, for instance, is publicly available as well as tools to help at the make of it.
"the distro might run a quality check on it"
And it does for quite a large bunch of software. But this shouldn't refrain you from plubishing your own "non-blessed-by-the-distro" software if you want to. After all, I don't think neither Microsoft nor Apple runs quality checks on, say, Dreamweaver, and nobody expects it to be otherwise.
"What good is it to release a software today and having to wait three or more years till it finds it way into Debian"
Here you simply don't know what are you talking about.
"There are of courses dozens of other problems, but those above are probally the main ones"
Then we are quite lucky since noone of the "problems" you talk about are real problems at all, but in your imagination and due, so it seems, from poor knowledge.
Re:Beautiful (Score:3, Insightful)
I think people are in denial that this is a problem.
- The security model of (most) Linux systems still assumes the fact that a binary being on the hard disk means that it should be entitled to every single permission associated with the user when run.
- Users need to understand a priviledge escalation model (sudo) and be given permission by a site-wide administrator in order to install anything, includng prepackaged documentation. This is good sometimes, but there is no way for an adminstrator to say that user installs are ok, without giving some form of limited root access.
Current 'consumer' operating systems certainly aren't perfect on this account in terms of security, but those security issues are already acknowledged and being worked on.
Re:How OSX on x86 and Linux could help each other: (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps Mr. Torvalds is no anti-Microsoft zealot. But you can't say the same about many of the early leaders of the Free software world.
In particular, Richard Stallman, who is largely responsible for gcc, emacs, binary tools, the FSF foundation, the GPL license. He is even (arguably) largely responsible for the success of Linux in general. Yet he is incredibly anti-Microsoft and very well criticized. Granted he is not one of the zealots that are linux-illiterate, and so he will not be converting to osx any time soon.
But to answer your assertion above, no, I don't think the Linux community could have flourished without that segment of the population.
Perhaps you are new to the free software movement, and so I forgive you.
Not root? Sudo? (Score:4, Insightful)
This is how windows has worked for ages and it's the most common way to own a system - it's so incredibly easy to install something, just click and bang and we own u.
It's not hard to type a password when installing an app. It tells the user they are doing something to alter the fucntionality of their machine and it tells the machine this is what the user wants to do.
Re:Why should OS X be a threat? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Beautiful (Score:5, Insightful)
Next, you complain that the debian packages are very often out of date, which is true, however, you confuse the issue of debian as distribution versus the way debian packages work. In otherwords, you are confusing one organizations implimentation instead of the actual methodology.
Along those same lines, when you complain about packages being out of date, again, they are, in the Apple or Windows world, with commercial software, how often do new updates come out? I'm not aware of anyone running Office 2005, so you could say that Office is also out of date.
Most of your complaints seem aimed specifically at debian itself. There are other debian based distros that have solved many of these.
One final comment, I am assuming that you are the sole user of your computer and it is at home or a small business, because you complain about having to become an admin to install software. Well, in most businesses, that would be a plus, because you don't want joe-worker to be installing whatever he pleases. At home, too, it is a plus, I don't know how often the kids have downloaded and installed something that broke Windows. However whether OS X, BSD or Linux, you could always enable sudo for the users you trust not to screw up the system and thus mitigate the problem. I believe that is the approach that OS X took, along with several of the debian based distros.
Re:How can ANYTHING "threaten" Linux? (Score:3, Insightful)
Like FreeBSD? They seem to be alive and kicking.
Re:Beautiful (Score:3, Insightful)
No, I don't want a
That said there would of course be still the problem with multiple different architectures, but that could be solved by having a standard source+metadata format, that can be easily automatically build.
Re:Beautiful (Score:5, Insightful)
The natural response, of course, is to say: "no, that's an unnecessary reduction ad absurdum. We can just declare (by some means similar to the LSB) that all applications must use GTK+ 2.4."
But then what do you do six months down the road when you start to see applications written for GTK+ 2.6? Now, either you have to convince every application developer to stick with 2.4 (unlikely); distribute those applications statically linked (ugly, see above); or explain to your users why they have to upgrade to the next version of your distribution to run what they want to run.
Given that sort of choice, I'd think most users and developers would rather work on making packaging systems more friendly instead of abandoning them altogether.
Specification Based Development (tangent) (Score:4, Insightful)
It seems to me that we're moving towards a specification-based development model. Even some of the GNOME guys are talking about making GNOME a ''specification,'' rather than a particular ''implementation.''
If we can do this, then it's a great thing, because it means we'll have the basis of a not-just-coders development model. We'll have something where the body of developers are separate from the body of designers. This leads the way for even more decentralization, which is exactly what we need: Right now, the developers are the bottleneck in pretty much all operation. There is very little separation of work, except for website maintenance.
The more we can make clusters of people working on specific tasks, with well defined roles, the greater we can scale this Free Software thing.
Re:Mac 924 Vs Microsoft Gremlin & Linux Miniva (Score:4, Insightful)
True, PowerPC chips were competitive against a similar x86 processor--oh, about 3 years ago.
Now, because IBM can't or won't improve the specs, PowerPC chips are outstripped. And Jobs saw that happening--FIVE YEARS AGO. That's foresight. He wants to keep a Mac at a comparable speed and performance to that of his competitors.
PowerPC chips WOULD still advantagous IF IBM would have a 3.2GHz chip for Apple's desktop ONE YEAR AGO and IF IBM had a 2.5GHz mobile G5 ONE YEAR AGO. Apple had a choice of being left behind or shopping around. Intel, for all its faults, is a strong chip maker that doesn't have their hand in many other projects to distract them. They power some of the faster computers in the world, and are happy to work with Apple for two reasons.
One, AMD is a serious competitor. And two, they hate the rep they have that all of their chips are piss poor, when the blame needs to go to the Windows operating systems that drive the majority of them AND the old IBM clone architecture still used on PCs today that limits their chips. We know that Linux works fine on x86, so we can expect that standard at the least with an Mactel system. But I expect more because that is Apple's wont.
Imagine a PC mobo without the BIOS and legacy limits, high bus speed, and running an OS that doesn't inhibit the processor's performance or require ancient hacks to work with new hardware. That very computer might be a Mac in two years. We'll see.
Time and again it has been said: putting an x86 chip doesn't mean a Mac's architecture will change dramatically. It might change for the better since Intel will aid Apple in making a mobo spec that really, really uses the processor to its fullest. It's what we expect from Apple, but we'll have to wait for the goods to be sure. In the meanwhile, my PowerBook is fine, my G4 is fine, and I look forward to a future that looks a hell of a lot brighter than it did when a 3.4GHz Mac of any kind did not exist.
Re:ARRRGH! (Score:3, Insightful)
NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!
This is why you have to reboot after you install many Windows applications. Why in gods name do many developers think they must put their glorified DLLS in my C:\winnt\system32 directory and modify the Registry into the high heavens (or pits of hell depending).
If you need to use parts of windows use the ones that come with windows library or ask the user to install it (like Direct X 9) and not overwrite it for them.
For gods sake man! You don't know what other program is using that DLL if you overwrite it. This is why one must format their hard drive after installing and uninstalling programs after a given amount of time in windows.
Programs should remain independant of the OS and make calls to it when it needs to. Programs should not modify the OS!
BTW this is not a common pratice on Mac OS X.
Re:Beautiful (Score:1, Insightful)
Bad example. XUL is not a library that is loaded externally. It renders to GTK on linux. It renders to carbon or cocoa on mac.
A correct example would be that you wuold have to choose either GTK or Qt for development of GUI's on linux, and to that I say: please do it, soon. There is nothing as irritating as having app Foo that you really really want using interface paradigm A, and app Bar that you really really want using interface paradigm B, which is the case on any real world Linux desktop used for real work right now, because there is always that one Qt app you want to use on your GTK desktop, or the other way around. There is simply not enough room for two base widget toolkits on a single desktop. Not if you want it to be usable and integrated. The conceptual differences between GTK and Qt should be layered on top of a base library which they both use, just like what happens on the mac and on windows.
Linux, I think, does as well as it does because it can rally such a vast array of applications, and it does that by supporting applications using the console, pure GTK+, QT, GNOME, KDElibs, FLTK, Edje, XUL, Mono, or whatever takes your fancy.
What universe do you live in? Linux on the desktop is a failure. Despite being free in all senses of the word, it has even less marketshare than OS X, an OS which only comes bundled with rather expensive niche hardware. The reason is quite simple: UI chaos because there is no cathedral. I abandoned linux (specifically debian) because I realized that FOSS programmers, despite understanding you need leadership to keep a clean codebase, do not understand you need leadership to keep a clean user interface.
Desktop linux will remain an also-ran until the FOSS crowd groks this and works out some way to let knowledgeable people tinker while keeping the interface for users across the entire system integrated and standardized.
Re:Beautiful (Score:1, Insightful)
The point is that you CANNOT .. if you are using a package management system.
What we need is a hierarchical package system. The base stuff provided by the admin to all users.
When a user downloads a .deb or a .rpm and installs it locally, the package management _client_ should automagically do the right thing. The right thing is to use the stuff that's common to all users (maybe add a refcount) and follow dependencies to add other stuff locally.
When you remove an app, then you remove the local shit (it doesn't affect anybody else) and drop the refcount to the global system level stuff by one.
Of course you can have a malicious client that insists on not dropping the refcount .. but that doesn't sound like such a big deal.
to reiterate - yes, users can install apps in their home dirs .. but for that they need to compile from source. It's gotta be made easier .. come on, this is 2005 - not 1996.
Ubuntu graphical package manager is beautiful (Score:2, Insightful)
Plus using the GUI package manager built on top of APT was incredible easy. Simply point and click and I installed MySQL, Apache web server, PHP4 (with mysql support), mod_php, and phpmyadmin. All the installs took literally seconds and all wored first time out of the box. Oh - and all the apps are Free Software.
What makes Apple better isn't necessarily the GUI so much as the ease of use. If the linux community keeps making things this easy, then I think that will be what makes the difference.
Re:Only if (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:How can ANYTHING "threaten" Linux? (Score:3, Insightful)
These are all valid points, but you forgot one subtle thing...
Vendors having access to a Free (and free) operating system, Linux in this case, helps them push technology farther and faster, and helps get products out into customer hands more rapidly.
It also allows those customers to hack on it, improve upon it (Linksys WAP/Routers being one great example, TiVo being another) and send fixes and features back to the vendors, who then incorporate them into their next revision of products.
If Linux (or other favorite Free Operating System of choice here) did not exist , vendors would have MUCH more expensive products (to help offset their own licensing costs for embedded operating systems), and products would evolve MUCH more slowly (because fixes to the OS would have to go back to the commercial OS vendor for testing, Q&A, acceptance, and put into their release cycle schedule).
The "death" of Linux wouldn't kill Linux, but it would most-definately dramatically slow down the advance of technology and further increase the costs associated with purchasing the hardware we all enjoy at low costs today.
There's a lot more to it than just "desktop users" and "market share".
Re:Windows XP installer sucks less than Macintosh (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Windows XP installer sucks less than Macintosh (Score:3, Insightful)
By this I mean that throwing away an app doesnt clean up its (usually) one small pref file, isnt really a big deal, as in comparison to the windows registry. The registry is actively 'marketed' as the place to keep application prefs. IMHO its insane to keep user application prefs in a system structure that is loaded into memory at boot time. On top of that many apps that have installers dont do a good job of cleaning up after themselves.
So you have a branch in a system structure that make a user cry, and isnt recommended that they access to clean up, that is loaded into memory for apps that may no longer exist.
*OR*
Usually small pref files in the users home directory that are named for the app that they came with that are sitting unused on big secondary storage devices.
I'll gladly take the latter of 2 evils.
The rest is valid, sorta. Most things do not install kexts, Drivers for hardware, are well drivers. they arent loaded unless needed. That only becomes an issue if there is a compatibilty problem with a old diver version, and with something like printers reinstalling overwrites. As for prefpanes, most (not all anti virus for example) are things that users tend to isntall manually, and they have instructions on where to put them. If someone cant figure out how to reverse.. well *shrug*
And the extra bonus is that all of these things are generally in well named folders so you know what to expect in there. While its not really automated; and not exactly trivial; its still a far cry from a nameless xxxxxxxx.scr or
Re:Windows XP installer sucks less than Macintosh (Score:4, Insightful)
Now that is truly a heroic reach.
You mean to tell me, that dragging the application's icon to the trash is somehow less logical to you than locating a Control Panel that will 'teleport' it off your system?
'Single-click' = click icon, drag to trash.
'many-click' = click Start, click Control Panels, click Add/Remove Applications, click down scroll arrow to desired app, click app, click Remove.
Look, the Add/Remove thing is stupid. There is no good reason in this day and age that the OS cannot figure out what I want to do when I drag an app to the trash/bin.
And you are wrong about 'traces' of an app - the only thing left behind is the .plist file, which is all of 4k.
There are good things to pick on in OS X, but application installing/de-installing is not one of them.
Re:Beautiful (Score:3, Insightful)
I liken witnessing OSS developers attack the app bundle system to watching people who design economy cars for a living yell and scream about how a tank has really lousy fuel efficiency because of all of the bloat of that uneeded heavy armor.
Re:Windows XP installer sucks less than Macintosh (Score:3, Insightful)
You think users should have the option to delete them, and they do have that option. Preference files are always stored in the same place. If you really did want them deleted, you would know where to find the file. My grandma, on the other hand, has no idea what a preference file is, doesn't care whether it's deleted, and certainly doesn't care where it's stored.
Main point here: deleting preference files certainly isn't the drama you would like others to believe. I believe that's called FUD, or perhaps you just have never had any real experience using app bundles.
Re:Beautiful (Score:3, Insightful)
First of you can't install a application as a user, now how stupid is that? If *I* want to install a bleeding edge version of Gimp, I neither want to bother the admin with it nor do I want to force it an all the others users, yet Debian requires me todo exactly that.
It's not stupid at all and is in fact what OS X does and what windows is slowly moving towards. Fact is, if you aren't a trusted users, you shouldn't be installing anything. On a multi-user system, the admin can give you sudo access to be able to install things. Allowing anyone to install anything is just plain stupid. If you want a cutting edge version of gimp, download and compile it in your home directory. You definately should not be able to install it system-wide no matter what package management system you have.
Secondly Debian packages work great, but only for stuff that is in Debian, which might be a lot, but is *far* from everything and its also often *way* outdated, remember those three year release cycles.
Spoken by someone who must not actually use debian. Sure debian stable is a little behind but remember, it's *stable* meaning that buggy cutting edge program won't be there. However there is also testing and unstable which contain much more recent versions of things.
Software packaging should be done by those that provide the software in the first place, the distro might run a quality check on it, but thats it.
Sure that would be great and it happens to some extent but I don't expect the author of a program to package their program up for each distro. The only way that this would happen is if there was only one package management system. But there's not and probably never will be. Different flavors of Linux put things in different spots... If they didn't, there would really be only one distro of Linux.
There are very few programs that I have not beed able to find a
So maybe you should shut your mouth unless you know what you are talking about.
Re:Beautiful (Score:1, Insightful)
Right. So when Mac zealots want to make OS X sound good, they tell us it's Unix, no really it is, it's got BSD code in it and everything, it's UNIX!!!!!1111. And when it turns out that using OS X as though it were Unix is a quick and easy way to break it, they say no, stupid, of course you can't do that, it's not Unix, you need to port all that Unix software and make it play nicely with the Mac.
Make your mind up, okay, people? Either OS X is Unix (in which case we can criticise its failings as a Unix), or it isn't (in which case YOU can't say it is when you're trying to evangelise it).
One or the other. Which will it be?