[NTLUG:Discuss] Mac v. Linux

[Burton Strauss]

Wrong.  It will be HUGELY visible.  Don't you remember the conversion from
68xxx?  EVERY SINGLE application needed to be re-written (at a minimum
re-compiled) and for years and years had to be offered in two versions.  At
least with CD and DVD, you can probably get all of this on one disk so it's
largely transparent - for NEW stuff.

But all of the old stuff won't work.  And just like at other transitions, a
lot of code will be orphaned.

Besides, I think you are also wrong on how much commodity hardware will
creep in.  It's just not cost effective to design a new bus and then new
North/South bridge chips.  So it's still going to be SATA and USB and PCI
and DDR.   So while there may be a custom boot rom (BIOS), at some point
it's going to load x86 code.

My bet?  If you want to run windows on the ApplePC, go ahead.  They'll tell
you it's not supported, but it will probably work...  And if you can boot
Windows, you can boot Linux.

So now you're back at the question of why anyone would pay the Apple Tax for
commodity hardware.  And whether you want to pay for an OS to get support or
roll your own.

I can see a future where there are three viable desktop OS choices -
Windows, Mac and Solaris - all running on the same cheap Chinese hardware.
And then there's the oddballs - Linux and the *BSDs.  Which will be used by
a few die-hards but mostly by people who have cars in their front yards
sitting on cinderblocks.

-----Burton

-----Original Message-----
From: discuss-bounces at ntlug.org [mailto:discuss-bounces at ntlug.org] On Behalf
Of Steve Baker
Sent: Tuesday, June 07, 2005 7:22 PM
To: NTLUG Discussion List
Subject: Re: [NTLUG:Discuss] Mac v. Linux

Andrew Brown wrote:
> Well the hoopla is a hoopin' over the Mac to Intel move. Been reading 
> some articles today about how this may impact Linux. Some of the 
> "pundents" seem to see this as more a challenge to Linux than to MS as 
> Mac OS is the "best of breed" Unix system.

I find it hard to see how it'll have any impact whatever.

The key thing to understand is that Mac-on-Intel does *not* mean Mac-on-PC.

Apple are a hardware company - their new machines almost certainly won't be
PC-compatible, and there is no indication that they'd ever sell their OS for
PC's.

So my prediction is that Mac's will still be Mac's - and the fact that they
have a different CPU inside will be pretty much invisible to everyone.

About the most impact it'll probably have is to gradually reduce the numbers
of people maintaining Linux PPC distro's as the PPC Mac's start to become
obsolete.

---------------------------- Steve Baker -------------------------
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