It's an awsome idea and I hope its true, if developers continue to stop making software for the mac then mac users will still have an great selection of free linux software to use, all Apple really has to do is release their own Fink type program or even better, help out the Fink team.
I think it would certainly alleviate some peoples worries about developers stopping development for the mac... I dont see linux software development stopping anytime soon and linux has a lot of great apps.
Well, this Apple-Linux stuff doesn't seem overly unrealistic to me. Quite the contrary, tapping into the success of Linux would be a very wise thing for Apple to do.
I wonder what OS X would have been like with Linux under the hood... Perhaps Apple would have been hindered in doing what it wanted with the OS when working on Jaguar, Panther etc.
Never the less, a great porting tool would be great but I have a hard time seeing that it could bridge the incompabilities of the X-Windows world...
On Macosrumors... This development is interesting yet very plausible. Any thoughts anyone?
I think you should stop reading Macosrumors... completely stop. Not trying to be rude but it is positively the most groundless source of Mac information there is. Spread the word.
*Despite* it being MOSR, there's some demonstrable truth to this *now*. 10.3 includes some new APIs that are explicitly for helping to port Linux apps. Ie, they're Linux-specific APIs, where Linux and the BSD families differ. It's not 100% by any means, but it's a small start.
So, with 10.4, if they decide to actually flesh this out as a full-fledged marketing point, it's not totally off the wall. Would certainly help garner interest from Linux heads.
But replacing the BSD core with Linux, as some people seem to be misinterpreting that info? Never gonna happen.
Yup. OS X is already starting to look like Linux to Linux applications, so 100% or near 100% compatibility is pretty easy to deduce with no insider information at all.
As an aside, Linux compatibility would make OS X look more attractive to IBM, too...
I wonder what OS X would have been like with Linux under the hood... Perhaps Apple would have been hindered in doing what it wanted with the OS when working on Jaguar, Panther etc.
Forget it. Apple would have a hell of a problem with licencing issues. Linux is under the GPL which requires you to opensource anything you link to code under it. Apple would have a hell of a time separating Quartz/CoreFoundation from any GPL-code to prevent the FSF to send their lawyers enforcing a complete opensource MacOS.
The BSD-licence in contrast is truely free.
Apple experimented with Linux years back ("MKLinux") and I have no doubt the licencing issues were one of the factors they went with BSD/Mach.
Do I do it or not? What the heck? I hate to remind everyone, but MOSR predicted ITMS about a year and a half before it happened- long before anyone else. They occasionally get one right, but they never get credit. Pandering in long range Apple rumors is like being a psychic, but psychics get credit for what they get right and everyone forgets the wrong predictions. The exact opposite happens in here. The safe bet is to predict what will happen tomorrow like Think Secret. Then again, that's no fun.
It's a curious topic. I use Maya, and when I use plugins for maya that only have Irix, WinNT, and Linux versions I use the Linux versions, and all that I have tried work just fine.
I'm not a pro with this Unix/Linux stuff by no means, but both being BSD based I think with some serious tinkering Apple could make darwin Fully Linux code compliant. That would be a better accomplishment than to switch it over to linux, and abandon the Unix. If it can be done Apple is working on it, and that will be a stellar accomplishment.
It's a curious topic. I use Maya, and when I use plugins for maya that only have Irix, WinNT, and Linux versions I use the Linux versions, and all that I have tried work just fine.
I'm not a pro with this Unix/Linux stuff by no means, but both being BSD based I think with some serious tinkering Apple could make darwin Fully Linux code compliant.
Just FYI, UNIX, Linux and BSD represent three completely different code trees that implement fairly similar-looking operating systems (Linux differs the most, which is why "Linux compatibility" is even an issue). Darwin is another; it borrows heavily from both BSD and Linux at the library and networking levels, but the kernel is singular.
What strange reactions. This development is A) a no brainer and already happening, and publicly!, so why all the disbelief?
Maybe it is because this 'rumour' is worded so vaguely that you can read too much into it if you don't really understand the subtleties of unix/linux/bsd/darwin/x11 et al
Some facts:
* Apple now includes an officially supported X11 window server in Mac OS X. This massively improves the speed and usability of X11 apps (i.e. 'linux' apps) on the Mac, and they now work 'out of the box' to a far greater degree.
* Apple has been canvassing corporate users of Xll apps to find out which are the most important and most commonly used. It is then targetting the application developers (proprietary or open source) in order to make them work, and work well, on the Mac.
* Apple has made many small changes to make Mac OS X more comfortable for Linux users/developers. For example, Bash, is the default shell in Panther. This is a change from Tcsh to the Linux standard.
* Apple already has a semi-official alternative to fink called darwinports (http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/). They have double-clickable installers for many programs and their GUI installer appeared in early developer previews of Panther.
On the other hand, their follow up rumor claiming Quicktime, iChat etc. were going to be ported to Linux was just pants, there is no feasible business case for most of these. Rendezvous is already open source (and an IETF standard) and available on several platforms anyway, and the idea that Apple should produce an IDE for Linux is simply laughable.
Do I do it or not? What the heck? I hate to remind everyone, but MOSR predicted ITMS about a year and a half before it happened- long before anyone else. They occasionally get one right, but they never get credit. Pandering in long range Apple rumors is like being a psychic, but psychics get credit for what they get right and everyone forgets the wrong predictions. The exact opposite happens in here. The safe bet is to predict what will happen tomorrow like Think Secret. Then again, that's no fun.
It's also no fun when it's predicted yeaaars in advance. When you put out as much bullcrap as MOSR, you're bound to get one prediction right.
Believe it or not, MOSR predicted the G5 would be released one day! Yeaaars ago.
Do I do it or not? What the heck? I hate to remind everyone, but MOSR predicted ITMS about a year and a half before it happened- long before anyone else. They occasionally get one right, but they never get credit. Pandering in long range Apple rumors is like being a psychic, but psychics get credit for what they get right and everyone forgets the wrong predictions. The exact opposite happens in here. The safe bet is to predict what will happen tomorrow like Think Secret. Then again, that's no fun.
Comments
Originally posted by richardb
Any thoughts anyone?
About as many as MOSR put in their story...none.
I think it would certainly alleviate some peoples worries about developers stopping development for the mac... I dont see linux software development stopping anytime soon and linux has a lot of great apps.
Need I say more?
I wonder what OS X would have been like with Linux under the hood... Perhaps Apple would have been hindered in doing what it wanted with the OS when working on Jaguar, Panther etc.
Never the less, a great porting tool would be great but I have a hard time seeing that it could bridge the incompabilities of the X-Windows world...
Originally posted by richardb
On Macosrumors... This development is interesting yet very plausible. Any thoughts anyone?
I think you should stop reading Macosrumors... completely stop. Not trying to be rude but it is positively the most groundless source of Mac information there is. Spread the word.
So, with 10.4, if they decide to actually flesh this out as a full-fledged marketing point, it's not totally off the wall. Would certainly help garner interest from Linux heads.
But replacing the BSD core with Linux, as some people seem to be misinterpreting that info? Never gonna happen.
As an aside, Linux compatibility would make OS X look more attractive to IBM, too...
As IBM pushes Linux, they want a desktop OS that provides easy migration.
Apple may have their answer.
Originally posted by richardb
I wonder what OS X would have been like with Linux under the hood... Perhaps Apple would have been hindered in doing what it wanted with the OS when working on Jaguar, Panther etc.
Forget it. Apple would have a hell of a problem with licencing issues. Linux is under the GPL which requires you to opensource anything you link to code under it. Apple would have a hell of a time separating Quartz/CoreFoundation from any GPL-code to prevent the FSF to send their lawyers enforcing a complete opensource MacOS.
The BSD-licence in contrast is truely free.
Apple experimented with Linux years back ("MKLinux") and I have no doubt the licencing issues were one of the factors they went with BSD/Mach.
I'm not a pro with this Unix/Linux stuff by no means, but both being BSD based I think with some serious tinkering Apple could make darwin Fully Linux code compliant. That would be a better accomplishment than to switch it over to linux, and abandon the Unix. If it can be done Apple is working on it, and that will be a stellar accomplishment.
Very very basic stuff tho. No gui only printf to stdout.
Dobby.
Originally posted by onlooker
It's a curious topic. I use Maya, and when I use plugins for maya that only have Irix, WinNT, and Linux versions I use the Linux versions, and all that I have tried work just fine.
I'm not a pro with this Unix/Linux stuff by no means, but both being BSD based I think with some serious tinkering Apple could make darwin Fully Linux code compliant.
Just FYI, UNIX, Linux and BSD represent three completely different code trees that implement fairly similar-looking operating systems (Linux differs the most, which is why "Linux compatibility" is even an issue). Darwin is another; it borrows heavily from both BSD and Linux at the library and networking levels, but the kernel is singular.
Maybe it is because this 'rumour' is worded so vaguely that you can read too much into it if you don't really understand the subtleties of unix/linux/bsd/darwin/x11 et al
Some facts:
* Apple now includes an officially supported X11 window server in Mac OS X. This massively improves the speed and usability of X11 apps (i.e. 'linux' apps) on the Mac, and they now work 'out of the box' to a far greater degree.
* Apple has been canvassing corporate users of Xll apps to find out which are the most important and most commonly used. It is then targetting the application developers (proprietary or open source) in order to make them work, and work well, on the Mac.
* Apple has made many small changes to make Mac OS X more comfortable for Linux users/developers. For example, Bash, is the default shell in Panther. This is a change from Tcsh to the Linux standard.
* Apple already has a semi-official alternative to fink called darwinports (http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/). They have double-clickable installers for many programs and their GUI installer appeared in early developer previews of Panther.
On the other hand, their follow up rumor claiming Quicktime, iChat etc. were going to be ported to Linux was just pants, there is no feasible business case for most of these. Rendezvous is already open source (and an IETF standard) and available on several platforms anyway, and the idea that Apple should produce an IDE for Linux is simply laughable.
Originally posted by murk
Do I do it or not? What the heck? I hate to remind everyone, but MOSR predicted ITMS about a year and a half before it happened- long before anyone else. They occasionally get one right, but they never get credit. Pandering in long range Apple rumors is like being a psychic, but psychics get credit for what they get right and everyone forgets the wrong predictions. The exact opposite happens in here. The safe bet is to predict what will happen tomorrow like Think Secret. Then again, that's no fun.
It's also no fun when it's predicted yeaaars in advance. When you put out as much bullcrap as MOSR, you're bound to get one prediction right.
Believe it or not, MOSR predicted the G5 would be released one day! Yeaaars ago.
Originally posted by kim kap sol
It's also no fun when it's predicted yeaaars in advance. When you put out as much bullcrap as MOSR, you're bound to get one prediction right.
Believe it or not, MOSR predicted the G5 would be released one day! Yeaaars ago.
Before everyone else, no doubt.
Originally posted by murk
Do I do it or not? What the heck? I hate to remind everyone, but MOSR predicted ITMS about a year and a half before it happened- long before anyone else. They occasionally get one right, but they never get credit. Pandering in long range Apple rumors is like being a psychic, but psychics get credit for what they get right and everyone forgets the wrong predictions. The exact opposite happens in here. The safe bet is to predict what will happen tomorrow like Think Secret. Then again, that's no fun.
The next post will start with an A
The next post will start with an B
The next post will start with an C
The next post will start with an D
The next post will start with an E
The next post will start with an F
The next post will start with an G
The next post will start with an H
The next post will start with an I
The next post will start with an J
....
Get it?