Desktop Linux on x86 - Adapt or Die

An anonymous reader writes "The recent announcement of Apple's upcoming x86 systems has gotten a lot of people thinking. Among the conjecture, there has been much thought given to how Linux will be affected by this move. The author of this article does not believe that Linux as a whole is threatened harmed by the 'Mactel' alliance, but does point out that his could mean major trouble for distros like Xandros and Linspire which are reliant on the desktop audience. These distros are clearly not ready to take on OS X, which will soon be the primary x86 alternative to Windows XP not only because of OS X's dedicated and outspoken user base but because of its slick looks and ease of use."

Re:I still don't get it..

[Squareball]

Ahmen brother! People are acting like OS X has been announced for generic X86 boxes and it hasn't. In the end you'll still have to buy a mac to use OS X so I don't see how this changes anything. The only difference is that it'll have Intel x86 inside instead of PPC. Other than that it will be the same damn thing.

Re:Desktop Linux will not die, but grow instead

[argent]

Desktop Linux distros come with hundreds of quality desktop applications, installed and license-free, at no cost.

Hardly any of those apps are high quality, and they may be using any of half a dozen different user interface toolkits... so none of them can be said to really be part of your desktop the way Mac and Windows apps are. True, this is due to the way X11 developed as a test platform for user interface design, but it means that the advantage of X11 being native on Linux is a lot less than you're arguing.

Linux being used very often as a server, it's just as simple to install major server apps (Apache, Tomcat, mysql, vsftpd etc.) as other apps.

Mac OS X ships with apache and mysql, and is just as compatible with other server apps. And, well, my only experience with Tomcat is that it'll be a cold day in hell before I consider it as anything but a liability.

The "slick GUI" advantage of OS X [...]

The slickness of the OS X GUI is overrated. The most important feature of the Mac GUI is its internal consistency.

For people who want to be a part of the open source movement, Linux (or BSDs) is the natural choice.

That's why I switched to Mac OS X for my desktop. It's built on open-source UNIX and deeply compatible with FreeBSD... my open-source UNIX of choice.

Linux will run on a TON of hardware, including old hardware, which means you can use to "revitalize" existing machines and save money.

That's true, you may have to pay fifty dollars or more for an old Powermac G3 to run Mac OS X.

The typical Linux environment is highly, highly scriptable.

Not as scriptable as Mac OS X, by a long shot. Not only does it come with bash, tcsh, perl, python, and tcl, it's also got GUI scripting through Applescript, and now Javascript in Dashboard.

Desktop Linux isn't dead because of OS X, it's dead because it was never alive. I tried hard, for decades, to find a desktop UNIX that didn't suck, and desktop Linux is nowhere near the top of the short list. But a couple of years ago, when I put OS X on an old Beige Powermac, I even trashed my shortlist... OS X is it, it's the only hope for desktop UNIX.

, and none of them are scriptable the way Mac OS applications are.

Re:I still don't get it..

[mindstormpt]

As the parent pointed out, that won't change, it will stay exactly the same. Those who want an alternative with their current hardware will still go for linux, and those who don't mind buying new stuff will either pay for a mac or not, as they would today. The only thing that might change for the end user is the price, and there's no guarantee it will..

You still won't be able to run OS X

[Colin Smith]

On your desktop PC.

It is still not a PC operating system. Absolutely nothing has changed.

This is a non issue.

Re:I still don't get it..

[suresk]

No, you won't. You'll still have to buy Apple hardware to run OS X.

Re:But OTOH

[akc]

I'm guessing most Linux developers would love to have a more polished interface, but they don't want to do it, because it's boring work. The fact of the matter is, proofreading dialog boxes and checking for consistent menu options and whatnot is not all that fun. Linux development happens mostly through hobbyists, and they're going to spend their free time doing what they enjoy.

I have heard that sort of assertion several times before, but I don't believe it is true. You only have to hang out on the kde-usability mailing lists (and I am sure the gnome equivalent) to realise that this subject really is important to some developers and they get their kicks by making a very usable desktop.

Re:Could Boost Desktop Linux

[moderators_are_w*nke]

At WWDC, Jobs made it quite clear why they chose Intel. The performace per watt of power of Intel chips was massively higer then for PowerPC and the gap was predicted to get wider.

Jobs wants to lose the costly liquid cooling in the G5s and make faster powerbooks. This is clearly reason enough without the need for any ulterior motive. All this DRM stuff is just Linux community FUD.

Re:Desktop Linux will not die, but grow instead

[flithm]

Good points, and a good post. Except for one part:

Torvald's response came quickly and succinctly. "My main machine these days is a dual 2GHz G5 (aka PowerPC 970) - it's physically a regular Apple Mac, although it obviously only runs Linux, so I don't think you can call it a Mac any more ;)" he said.

Reference [zdnet.com.au].

Re:But OTOH

[dangitman]

I got a mac recently. I like it quite a bit but it does have some flaws. In fact, there is one flaw that is amazingly annoying -- no middle-click paste.

Huh? Just configure your mouse to give the CMD+V keyboard shortcut when the middle button is pressed.

Ok done.

[zippthorne]

It took me more time to format and write this comment than it took me to find this:
Toshiba Satellite [toshibadirect.com]

for $999 (the price of the cheapest 12" ibook)
you get:

RAM: 512MB on board and one free slot,
CPU: Intel mobile P4 (3.20GHz, 1MB L2 cache, 533MHz FSB)
OS: Microsoft® Windows® XP Home Edition (SP2)
BUNDLED: No Microsoft® Office software
I'm willing to count this as a feature :)
SCREEN: 15.4" Wide-screen XGA Display w/TruBrite(TM) (1280x800)
GFX CARD: ATI MOBILITY(TM) RADEON(TM) 9000 IGP w/up to 128MB video memory (64MB default)
40GB HDD (5400rpm)
REMOVEABLE DRIVE: 8x DVD-SuperMulti drive (IS also a DVD burner)
WIRELESS: Atheros® Wireless LAN (802.11b/g) supporting Atheros SuperG(TM) technology

Now for the apple:
1.2GHz PowerPC G4
512K L2 cache @1.2GHz
12-inch TFT Displays
1024x768 resolution
256MB DDR266 SDRAM
30GB Ultra ATA drive
Combo Drive (NOT a DVD burner)
ATI Mobility Radeon 9200
32MB DDR video memory
AirPort Extreme built-in

They appear to have similar graphics cards, (PC version has 2x the ram and is expantable). In all other areas except one, the PC wins: it's not 12"*.. Aparantly they are hard to find with screens that small. No amount of argument (except some benchmarks which i highly doubt you can produce) will convince me that a P4 mobile of more than 2x the speed (almost 3x!) of the G4 is slower than saidsame chip.

*It's 15" widescreen, so it's going to be pretty close to the 12" size in height, but it'll be a little longer - it's still going to fit in your backpack.

I'll admit I might have some bias because I own an 800ghz toshiba satellite (only two things wrong after 4 years of dropping it in the body search line at airports: keyboard connector came loose and battery never lasted long, died quickly as well) It even runs linux. Though If i were to buy another laptop right now, it'd be a powerbook (small form factor, OSX, allegedly good battery life) But performance wise, I'd to have to take the hit vs. similarly priced PC notebooks.

Re:But OTOH

[poofyhairguy82]

I think people place too much faith in the ability of Linux filesystems to "avoid fragmentation".

They do a good job if you don't fill the disks to the brim. My ext3 disk only goes above 1% fragmentation when it is nearly full. When that happens, there is this defragger. [oo-software.com]

Re:But OTOH

[nathanh]

OSX was build from almost scrath in less than half the time Linux has been in existence.

Woah there nelly. You haven't got that one quite right. The origins of OS X [kernelthread.com] began in 1985 with the first public release in 1988. It's older than Linux by a few years. It evolved a bit between 1988 and 1997 before Apple bought it, and Apple did some fairly major reworking, but OS X has a 20 year history and has spent 8 years with Apple. Linux is only 14 years old and KDE/GNOME are only 8 years old. So to be completely honest, the KDE/GNOME guys have managed to build *two* desktops from scratch in less than half the time OS X has been in existence! You got it exactly backwards.

Re:Could Boost Desktop Linux

[goMac2500]

Huh? Apple has made it quite clear they aren't huge fans of DRM, and will only use it when forced to. The Apple engineers I've talked to have made it quite clear this move was about laptop chips and speed.

Re:I still don't get it..

[node 3]

For the millionth time: Apple will not sell OS X separately,

Ironically, Apple has sold Tiger, separately, over two million times.

They have you beat by an easy mil.

and OS X will not run on non-Apple hardware! How hard is this for people to understand?!?!?!?!?

OS X runs on non-Apple, Intel hardware, right now. When the x86 version becomes available, PearPC will be just that much faster. The only way Apple can stop it is to use rock-solid DRM, and as there has never been a rock-solid DRM scheme to date, the odds are good that you'll be able to run Mac OS X on any Intel PC by loading it from a miniscule Linux install.

Of course, your average PC user won't go through the hassle of installing a small Linux system to run OS X, but your average Linux user will, which is the subject of this current topic.

Apple Notebooks ARE competitive

[Anonymous Coward]

Their notebooks are thin, silent, 100% Linux compatible (sans the airport extreme), and pack a punch. Find a 3-4lb notebook with a 12" screen with the same features of the iBook for $999 in the Windows world- it doesn't exist.

Re:linux users don't get it

[Rutulian]

That's why KDE's default menu is cluttered with a million apps that 90% of their audience will never use, why GNOME's is hardly better and why even Xfce is slower than Explorer.

When will X.org not require the user to edit a text file to configure it?

Ok, if that's your desktop linux experience, then you've either been living under a box for the last three years, or you haven't used linux for the last five. The only retort I will bother with...Ubuntu Hoary w/ Gnome 2.10. Very nice distro with an out of the box easy to use desktop. Or try Fedora Core 4. I hear that is pretty nice too.

How many of you reading this, when sending an email in Thunderbird actually changed the "from" field? Maybe ten out two hundred; everyone else just keeps it the same, week after week. So why the fuck is that option there?

Seriously, why does it matter? I've been using Thunderbird for quite a while, and that extra feature hasn't bothered me at all. Guess what? When I created my email account, I clicked through and answered all of the questions asked by the wizard, and suddenly everything worked perfectly. Changing the From: field may be a feature only 1% of all users use, but it doesn't affect my everyday use, so who cares if it is there?

Re:But OTOH

[bursch-X]

>OS X on Intel will cost a hell of a lot more than a nice Linux desktop, and come with a lot less.

It will come with a lot more than ANY Linux box. Because

• you can basically run almost any of the OSS software available for Linux on OS X (be it natively like AbiWord or in X11 like the GIMP), plus
• it gives you access to tons of commercial software/shareware, plus
• it gives you access to tons of highly polished easy to use free (beer and speech) Cocoa apps (OS X only), plus
• bundled stuff like iLife makes it look like a fucking lot to me, there's nothing that comes even close in simplicity and usefulness anywhere.*

Just as an example: there are a lot of nice Cocoa apps that hook into your iLife collections, so you can directly access all of your photoalbums and Music collections/playlists from within other apps directly (applications like RapidWeaver [realmacsoftware.com], Comic Life [plasq.com] and the likes can access the albums and photos in iPhoto directly using the Apple provided APIs). Again that level of integration saves a lot of time and makes things that more fun. This is just one example of many.

* of course there are far more advanced Photo organizers DVD and video editing packages etc., but the iLife applications do the job in most cases in an astoundingly simple fashion. I used to do pro video work on Final Cut Pro, but nowadays I don't have time to fuck around with applications, so I often use the simpler (and more limited) iApps, and get the job done anyway.

Re:But OTOH

[bommai]

Actually Mac OS X allows both hex and ascii, they separate that clearly. You can choose which kind of password you are about to enter and then enter the appropriate phrase.

Maybe Kubuntu?

[Kjyn]

KDE might have more of what you want. It uses what are called ioslaves that can hook into different network filesystem through the kde environment: sftp and ftp, for example

I've used it for sftp. In konqueror, I typed sftp://username@hostname, got prompted for a password and it acted just like a local folder. I opened a file from the remote server (I believe it used Kate) and whenever I hit save it'd upload the new version of the file.

You'd have to try it out for samba as I don't know if the implementation is different. I would be surprised if it didn't work the same but you never know. I don't know if there's a way for non-kde apps to work as seamlessly as kde apps do. So unfortunately if your preferred editor doesn't start with a k or have a kde-ified version, then you may be back at square one.

I'd say put in a Knoppix CD to try out the KDE environment. Put samba://whatever in konqueror. If it works and you like it, you could install a distribution that is based off of KDE like Kubuntu if the Ubunutu distribution is your preferred choice. (Or maybe just install KDE inside ubuntu? I thought I saw some kde entries in that package manager of theirs.)

Re:But OTOH

[chip_0]

I would accept the point of documentation, but does it really hold any longer? Know of the site www.tldp.org ? And there are the man pages which explain the working of nearly all programs in the system.

Yes each distribution will differ in terms of the customisation they provide, each one will produce different wizards to perform tasks, admin the system and such. If one, instead of using these wizards, learns to edit the actual initialisation scripts to modify things, such knowledge carries about whenever you use a unix implementation. Really you can know just as much about the system as you want to, no more no less.

"archane directory structure"

/usr for installed programs
/etc for all systemwide configuration files
/home for different user's files
/boot for stuff related to booting the system
/tmp for temporary files

Those are what you are likely to occur, every thing is nice and systematic.

"random placement if configuration files"

System configuration files will all be in /etc, programs generally check the following areas -

1. Home directory for per user config
2. /etc for system wide config
3. The installation directory for a default

Again, quite logical.

"unconventional file names."

Conventional file names? What conventional file names?

Re:But OTOH

[Air-conditioned cowh]

After my recent experiences of using a Mac I can see it is _usually_ easy to use. However the error messages when they appear are completely useless. Messages like "the disk can not be burned right now".

OK, why not?!! How do I fix it?!!

Not sure if that was an _exact_ example of what I remember seeing but you get the idea.

Easy to use until something goes slightly wrong. And it also still has (Apple) apps with greyed-out options with no clue given as to why they haved been greyed out.

Not quite!

[HishamMuhammad]

"archane directory structure"

/usr for installed programs
/etc for all systemwide configuration files
/home for different user's files
/boot for stuff related to booting the system
/tmp for temporary files

Those are what you are likely to occur, every thing is nice and systematic.

Except that everything is not nice and systematic. First, all programs get dumped together under /usr, making it nearly impossible to cleanly uninstall if it was compiled from source or the package manager database got corrupted ("--force", anyone?), ocasionally with bits and pieces spread under /bin, /sbin, etc (look at all the different places the files from CoreUtils is usually installed). The fact that "ping" and "traceroute" are stored in different place is not systematic.

I also noticed you didn't describe /var -- now that's something quite hard to do (its de facto usage in distros, not the dream world described by the FHS).

"random placement if configuration files"

System configuration files will all be in /etc,
programs generally check the following areas -

True, but under /etc they are placed almost randomly. If you don't know the exact name of the configuration file you need (which may or may not be under a subdirectory...), you're out of luck.

Yes, the usual Linux directory structure is arcane.

Re:But OTOH

[bursch-X]

Path Finder seems to be a very interesting alternative to the Finder
http://www.cocoatech.com/ [cocoatech.com]

Re:But OTOH

[LatePaul]

I'm sick to death of people out there who reckon that Mac OSX is actually *easy* to use.

OK, I'll bite.

Any of you guys actually GOT a Mac?

Yep - same one as you

I have 2 laptops, one a Pentium M 1.8GHz and the other a 17" Powerbook, 1.5GHz. I am *constantly* pissed off at my Mac purchase.

Both have 1GB RAM, the intel version cost $2600, my Mac $4700. Totally NOT value for money.

Valid criticism but not a useability issue.

Software is hideously expensive for Macs, and doesn't work the way you want it. I bought the office suite as (of course) you need to have it, and Entourage isn't even compatible with Outlook, how *dumb* is that.

How is Microsoft's inability to make two of their programs compatible a problem with the useability of Mac OS X?

The adobe photoshop CS suite (or more likely, that fricking 'preview' program) managed to randomly kill a whole memory cards worth of images from my camera, say 300 pictures.

This is a) not a useability issue and b) if down to photoshop, nothing to do with Mac OS X

The DVD player program isn't region free. This pisses me off as Australia & USA don't share regions. If you need to play DVDs, something like VLC is needed but that's freeware ANYWAY and available for Windows too.

Yep but Windows doesn't come with a DVD player at all, and any commercial software won't be region free. Your problem here is with the DVD region encoding system not OS X. And once again it's not really a useability issue - that would be if you found the DVD player's controls difficult, annoying or confusing in some way.

Windows in Aqua can only be resized down the bottom right.

True. Doesn't seem to slow me down now I'm used to it though.

Rendering takes bloody ages, at least on my 1.5GHz model.

This is performance, not useability.

I use FreeBSD *all* the time, and have it running permanently on my other laptop through VMWare, and the BSD subsystem that's under Mac OSX (which is *why* I bought the mac laptop in the first place) is *nothing* like it.

This only makes it a useability issue if you expect Darwin to be like FreeBSD and you need to do stuff at a pretty low level. I don't recall ever seeing any statement from Apple saying Darwin was compatible at that level. If that's the reason you bought a mac - you probably should have done more research.

I mean to get stuff done, how do you guys actually see this happening?

Not sure what this sentence means - what 'stuff' are you trying to get done?

You can't run serious UNIX,

You can. You may need to actually learn something new though. Once again Darwin != FreeBSD

you can't script the interface using button hooks, it's all shit.

I haven't played with Automater yet but I suspect it'll do what you want if you're prepared to learn it.

Most of your criticisms are not even problems with Mac OS X much less Mac OS X useability.

Re:But OTOH

[macshome]

Erm.

You just pick what kind of key you are using (ASCII, hex, WPA) from the pick list and type it in.

What version where you looking at?