[NTLUG:Discuss] Mac v. Linux

[Kevin Hulse]

Quoting Steve Baker <sjbaker1 at airmail.net>:

> Burton Strauss wrote:
> > 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.
>
> Yeah - I agree that the change-over period will be traumatic - but once it's
> done, the net result (I predict) will be very little different from what we
> have now.

    Precisely. After everything is said and done, the Mac will still be
a tightly controlled, closed platform with different APIs and a limited
scope of 3rd party software or hardware support.

>
> The press announcement said that they'd be using 'Fat Binaries' (binaries
> with both PPC and Intel machine code encapsulated into a single file).
>

      That's fine for anything that's not already on the shelf or close
to being released.


[deletia]
> Doubtless quite a lot of commodity hardware will creep in - one assumes that

     You mean like the PCI, USB, Firewire and IDE hardware that already makes
up the bulk of a PPC Mac? Already, the Macs are little more than IBM PC clones
with a PPC instead of an x86.

     This cpu shift doesn't really change that.

> the main reason for Apple to take this costly and dangerous step is precisely
> to take advantage of off-the-shelf hardware.   After all, this is an
> increasing
> trend.  Apple havn't designed their own graphics hardware for many, many
> years
> for example.
>
> > 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.
>
> I doubt there will be any problems porting Linux to an Intel Mac - but
> Windows
> relies on a lot of old legacy junk that the Intel Mac may well not support.
>

    That would pretty much make an x86 equivalent to a "legacy free PC" plus
whatever Apple will try to include to limit OSX to their hardware.

> Apple's problem is that they are computer manufacturers.  If their hardware
> is 'just another PC', then the relatively high price of Mac hardware will
> put them in direct competition with the Dell's and Gateway's of this world.

    Yup.

>
> The Intel Mac hardware has to be very clearly different from a classic PC.

    This isn't going to happen without Apple putting much more effort into
their hardware than they've done in a long time.

[deletia]
> > 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.
>
> I doubt Linux will fall far behind MacOS - and I'm quite sure Solaris won't
> be a bigger force than Linux on the desktop...that seems inconceivable.

     This has more to do with Sun commitment than anything else. They already
have a well respected core OS that runs on generic PCs and can exploit 99.9%
of Linux desktop apps due to the nature of Free Software.

     The ability to run on arbitrary hardware makes up for quite a bit on
PC's.

>
> I agree that there will be three viable desktop OS's - but they'll be
> Windows,
> MacOS and Linux - not Solaris.
[deletia]

-- 
...as if the ability to run Cubase ever made or broke a platform.
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