Hmmm... Interesting. FreeBSD's Jordan Hubbard now develops Mac OS X.

Eug

Lifer
Mar 11, 2000
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Linky

And I agree with this statement: "Even the best Linux desktop designs, such as KDE or Gnome, are crude by Mac standards."

Jobs has brought *nix to the masses. Torvalds brought *nix to other *nix users. Too bad though, since Linux has so much potential.
 

Nothinman

Elite Member
Sep 14, 2001
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You talk as if Linux is going away because OS X looks prettier. I believe OS X is a good system and would buy a TiBook myself if they weren't so damned expensive, but Linux isn't going anywhere just because Apple hired a few FreeBSD developers (and then layed off a lot of them too)
 

fivepesos

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Jan 23, 2001
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very few linux users are likely to argue about the merits of OSX, they are plenty (stable, nice GUI, apple marketing push). however, making the assumption that OSX will kill linux is wrong for several reasons:

1) linux is multiplatform, you can run it on sparc, ppc, or x86
2) linux runs on multiple vendors hardware, OSX only runs on apples hardware (which is prohibitively expensive
3) linux has a very broad developer base that hasnt disappeared since OSX was released
4) currently there are more applications for linux than OSX (no knock on OSX, just there isnt yet)

now id love to run OSX, but that would require me shelling out my money for OVERPRICED apple workstations. thats whats gonna keep OSX from becoming the windows/linux killer. if apple released an x86 version of OSX (which shouldnt be too hard), it would carve a massive chunk out of redmond, but apple isnt going to.

now i asked a question a while ago to an Apple salesperson at Frys Electronics a while ago. I asked him why apple hadnt pushed products into the x86 marketplace. all he could say was that intel/amd werent powerful enough to run Aqua, specifically sighting architectural superiority of G3/4s. now i had to laugh at this as i pointed out that OSX is running xwindows (am i wrong?) which i run quite well with my nvidia graphics card on linux. he had nothing to say to that accept stumbling about the advantage of motorolla's G4s as a RISC processor over the overly complex x86 isa (which i generally agreed with). but then i asked him about fair benchmarks between the two and we decided on Apache, Sendmail, and Quake3. well guess what i pointed out to the apple zealot? all of those run equally well or faster on x86 linux. he seemed pretty incapable of convincing me of apple's superiority in hardware.

but i never argued any of his points on software. OSX is a great product, its fast, its easy to use, and its stable. apple always gets good developer support for audio/visual developers, which is a major plus. and they finally have a BSD core, which means that nearly everything that will run on bsd, will run on OSX, which is great decision.

so IMO, apple wont move beyond a niche market until they drop their hardware division.
 

fivepesos

Senior member
Jan 23, 2001
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i forgot to even address the "crude" linux desktops.

KDE2.x and Ximian Gnome are far from inferior to OSX. in fact i find them a far better desktop environment than OSX (however, i havent used OSX extensively and ill admit that).

i honestly dont know, but does OSX offer an integrated package management suite such as redcarpet? does apple allow users to subscribe to software channels and recieve updates or demos thru an integrated package installer?

does OSX offer multiple desktop environments? do users have a choice between two stellar and complete desktops (not to mention the dozens of mautre windows managers)?
 

FOBSIDE

Platinum Member
Mar 16, 2000
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as far as the desktop environment goes, OSX blows anything linux has out of the water imho. i dont use linux quite as much now since my power supply blew up, but from my experience, linux desktop environments just dont match up. thats not to say that linux is going to be phased out. hardware is the biggest boundary here i think. i dont think linux is going to die off just because someone made a prettier version of *nix.

one thing i wonder tho...from my experience, all my hardcore linux user friends do everything by command line. so many of the distros now come with tools so not everything has to be done command line. theres a whole new generation of *nix users that use the interface rather than the command line. linux does seem to be getting more and more interface-based. i guess thats the way most operating systems evolve. from command line to interface. but with *nix the command line is still very much intact unlike windows where the DOS command is almost useless to most users.
 

n0cmonkey

Elite Member
Jun 10, 2001
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I use linux and Mac OS X. Not to mention OpenBSD ;)

But Mac OS X's aqua interface is not superior to X. X is not superior to Aqua. They each have thier strengths. Aqua has the ease of use and plenty of tools for administration (although there are still a lot of things I like to use the command line for). X is able to run X applications on other machines over the network and display the gui locally. I use that functionality all of the time.

Linux wont die. Darwin is another UNIX-like system out there, and that will help Linux, BSD, and the commercial systems. More users is a good thing, even if one draws a few users from the others.
 

CTho9305

Elite Member
Jul 26, 2000
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personally, I think the most "intuitive" interface is windows... especially XP's Luna. I mean, it starts you with a recycle bin and the task bar, which has the start button bright green, so easily noticeable. Everything makes sense....

I hate it - it is butt-ugly, annoying, etc, but for new users, I cannot see OS X being easier than the windows GUI.
 

n0cmonkey

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Jun 10, 2001
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<< personally, I think the most "intuitive" interface is windows... especially XP's Luna. I mean, it starts you with a recycle bin and the task bar, which has the start button bright green, so easily noticeable. Everything makes sense....

I hate it - it is butt-ugly, annoying, etc, but for new users, I cannot see OS X being easier than the windows GUI.
>>



I disagree. Everything is a little pretty picture. Everything is well labeled and the organization isnt the best, but fairly logical.
 

fivepesos

Senior member
Jan 23, 2001
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i dont know about u guys, but i always change the organization of all my interfaces to suit my needs. i rearrange the startmenu under windows, adjust docked apps under windowmaker, or whatever. and the first thing i did with xp was disable Luna :)
 

kylef

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Jan 25, 2000
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Getting back to the topic at hand...

I wonder if this means that he will no longer be developing open-source code for the FreeBSD project... Shame. I was hoping that basing "Darwin" on most of the FreeBSD project would sink some more money into FreeBSD development, but it seems as though Apple has basically just branched its own kernel and has closed everything from there.

Oh, well... At least there's still the multimillion dollar DoD grant for developing a highly secure OS based on the FreeBSD project... That should accomplish a few things.
 

Nothinman

Elite Member
Sep 14, 2001
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I wonder if this means that he will no longer be developing open-source code for the FreeBSD project... Shame. I was hoping that basing "Darwin" on most of the FreeBSD project would sink some more money into FreeBSD development, but it seems as though Apple has basically just branched its own kernel and has closed everything from there.

He worked on FreeBSD for free before, he can still do it now. Unless he was stupid and signed a contract that said he couldn't, which I really doubt.
 

n0cmonkey

Elite Member
Jun 10, 2001
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<< I wonder if this means that he will no longer be developing open-source code for the FreeBSD project... Shame. I was hoping that basing "Darwin" on most of the FreeBSD project would sink some more money into FreeBSD development, but it seems as though Apple has basically just branched its own kernel and has closed everything from there. He worked on FreeBSD for free before, he can still do it now. Unless he was stupid and signed a contract that said he couldn't, which I really doubt. >>



Apple wouldnt make him do that. They take too much FreeBSD code ;)