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http://www.macnn.com/articles/04/01/21/linux.on.mac.primer/

IBM Developerworks offers Linux on Mac primer

updated 08:20 am EST, Wed January 21, 2004

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Linux on Mac primer

IBM Developerworks has posted an interesting article titled , which evaluates four distributions of Linux for PowerPC machines: Debian, Knoppix, Yellow Dog, and Mandrake: "I found two of the distributions to be well polished and easy to use, right on par with the best x86 Linux distributions; the other two I would have to describe as "not ready yet." A few other distributions exist as well -- and more will certainly be created over time. I was not aiming to provide a thorough comparison of every distribution readers might choose to use, but simply to get a sense of the 'state of the art'..."

by MacNN Staff

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01/21, 09:40am | report spam | close Reply |
How can anyone

call any distro of Linux polised. Maybe one is put together better than another however they are all poor in comparison to Windows or Macintosh.

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01/21, 09:54am | report spam | close Reply |
yep

agree

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01/21, 09:58am | report spam | close Reply |
Xserve: OS X Server free

He says OS X Server is $999 for the unlimited licence. That's true, but only if you get the OS after the fact.

If you buy an Xserve, It's free for OS X Server with the unlimited licence.

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01/21, 10:23am | report spam | close Reply |
Re: Xserve

But if you don't want an Xserve, you still face the $1000 cost. Plus, upgrades ARE NOT free, so buy an Xserve today, pay $1000 in September for x.4.

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01/21, 10:55am | report spam | close Reply |
OSX Server is not free

> If you buy an Xserve, It's free for
> OS X Server with the unlimited licence.

No - part of the cost of every Mac you buy
is the license fee. You can buy the OS by itself
for $129 for Panther and $999 for the unlimited
client version.

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01/21, 11:17am | report spam | close Reply |
I agree re: OS X Server

Of course, I already said in my original post above OS X Server costs $999 if you buy it after the fact.

I was just pointing out that the wording of the article might make it sound like OS X Server is $999 regardless if you buy an Xserve or not, and that is not true.

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01/21, 11:28am | report spam | close Reply |
go

Linux. Its the first thing I do when getting a new machine, take out that OSuX.

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01/21, 11:59am | report spam | close Reply |
Linux

is like my brother's car. Looks like both inside and out to have been taken from the dump and dropped on his driveway, however lift the hood and you find an engine so clean and impressive you almost forget about the rest of the car. He inherited the RedNeck genes.

Key word?

Almost

OSX doesn't have the engine of Linux, but it's very balanced and is much more serviceable by humans than Linux.

I'm not attempting to "diss" Linux, I'm just hung up on that "polished" word.

I just installed KDE and am now compiling Gnome 2.4 on my OSX box using Fink. You know, because I'm a geek.

I understand that most management with Linux is done via CLI using vi, however any modern OS has a GUI of some sorts and having to look an use KDE all day would really annoy me. Gnome is better, however I cannot comment too much with 2.4. (Gnome 1.4 appears to be much more "Mac" like whereas KDE goes the "Windows" route) Screenshots are nice though they don't say anything about usability.

I say Linux is coming along. For embedded servers that do not rely on real time operations where OS's such as QNX shines, it's a perfect fit. However to put Linux anywhere where humans other than the geek subculture are exposed to it day in and out would be considered torture in my book.

Of course, my first exposure to a GUI was GEOS for the C64, followed by the MacOS and then Win3.1. So I suppose I'm a glutton for punishment.

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01/21, 12:49pm | report spam | close Reply |
Under the hood

I have a Red Hat Linux 9 Server running netatalk and SMB services here at work. It is doing printer sharing, file sharing and the like. Samba 3.0 smokes on Linux- Netatalk is ok for the last remaining OS 9 folks- but man does Samba FLY on Linux!! I am very impressed at what is under the hood there with RH9. The distro is very stable and highly configurable. But I just can't imagine it as a Desktop OS for common users. KDE is just butt ugly, Bluecurve Gnome is OK (very OS X like actually in some ways) but the many desktop options and flavors that just pollute the simplicity of what should be a functional Desktop OS makes Linux still for servers only in my book....

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01/21, 12:51pm | report spam | close Reply |
2004

2004 should be the year of the Linux Desktop.

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01/21, 01:08pm | report spam | close Reply |
re: Linux Desktop

Yeah. Riiiiight.

Look, Linux is a great OS for certain uses, just as the Mac OS is the natural choice for certain OTHER uses.

But I don't expect to live long enough to ever see Linux be better than Mac OS X at all-around/general/consumer computing.

I should mention that I expect to live about another 40 years.

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01/21, 01:45pm | report spam | close Reply |
Linux

Linux has huge number of problems - it's a toy operating system still for the most part - very good at being a low cost server, very bad at almost everything else. Until recently [and only the very newest builds] it didn't even have a proper threading model. It also has a hugely bloated kernel - unlike say BSD which has a proper micro-kernel.

It is also a pain to migrate, with idiotic packagers like [especially] redhat back-porting experimental kernels into earlier builds completely breaking libc compatibility between releases. This forces developers to completely recompile all their software with boring regularity.

Also - mentioning red-hat, 'free'-dom of linux is disappearing as more and more packagers realise they cannot make money from it. Redhat 'enterprise server' is now available and is almost identical to RedHat 9... other than it costing you.

Things are getting better though, especially now gcc is stabilising its C++ ABI somewhat. Until it does so, very few companies are going to be bothered enough to target linux seriously - it is hard enough just supporting the most mainstream distributions. Out of Darwin, Solaris, Linux and HP-UX which we write for, Linux is possibly the biggest pain maintenance wise.. well, maybe apart from HP-UX ;-) ... but dynamic library loading, and c[pp]-libray versioning are a maintenance nightmare - as is trying to make any sort of good user experience while installing software for a non-techy user to understand.

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01/21, 01:51pm | report spam | close Reply |
linsux

yawn......

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01/21, 02:46pm | report spam | close Reply |
os x unlimited for $500

edu/goverment

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01/21, 03:27pm | report spam | close Reply |
package error

dependancy not found or missing.

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01/21, 07:36pm | report spam | close Reply |
Eventuality

Linux will eventually be huge. It has already exceeded the critical mass required to remain sustainable given its development model (this mass is lower than Mac OS and Windows). Thus, it will not go away in the foreseeable future. It will grow simply because it is cheap and it has a certain appeal. It needs a reason to really work on the desktop, though.

Linux will become huge the moment they fix the binary distribution nightmare that it currently has. OS X had a damn clever solution to that (compiler support for ABI revisions aside) but I doubt we will see Linux do that.

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IBM Developerworks offers Linux on Mac primer

updated 08:20 am EST, Wed January 21, 2004

Linux on Mac primer

How can anyone

yep

Xserve: OS X Server free

Re: Xserve

OSX Server is not free

I agree re: OS X Server

go

Linux

Under the hood

2004

re: Linux Desktop

Linux

linsux

os x unlimited for $500

package error

Eventuality

Login Here

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IBM Developerworks offers Linux on Mac primer

updated 08:20 am EST, Wed January 21, 2004

Linux on Mac primer

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How can anyone

yep

Xserve: OS X Server free

Re: Xserve

OSX Server is not free

I agree re: OS X Server

go

Linux

Under the hood

2004

re: Linux Desktop

Linux

linsux

os x unlimited for $500

package error

Eventuality

Login Here

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