5 ms·

"It's even more sad if you think that while all this was going on in the Linux desktop, Apple has successfully launched an unix desktop that has been stable and

by lwhi 15y ago

"It's even more sad if you think that while all this was going on in the Linux desktop, Apple has successfully launched an unix desktop that has been stable and usable for years. So it is possible and in a short timeframe, which means that Linux on the desktop is a failed experience." You're comparing apples with pears :) Apple design an OS for a supremely limited range of hardware. Your comparison isn't fair.

mongol 15y ago
It might not be fair but at the same time, isn't it true?
- lwhi 15y ago
  No. Desktop Linux is designed to be device independent. OS X isn't.
  - acous 15y ago
    OS X runs on multiple architectures with a wide variety of hardware. You can build a PC out of parts and run OS X on it. Just because the drivers are limited doesn't mean it isn't portable. The thing about OS X is that when the drivers are there, it works reliably and with a minimum of fuss. You can't say that about Linux.
    - lwhi 15y ago
      "The thing about OS X is that when the drivers are there, it works reliably and with a minimum of fuss. You can't say that about Linux." I think you're either trolling or are genuinely misinformed. If it's the latter, please accept my apologies.
      - acous 15y ago
        My relevant experience is with my htpc running linux and my linux/hackintosh dual boot machine. Both machines are fully supported by Linux and the hackintosh is supported by community kernel extensions. Getting linux up and running for the htpc required a lot of fiddling with config files... adding refresh rates to X manually, custom ALSA configs to enable the audio device to show up correctly, accept the correct sample rates and stream 5.1 properly, adding extra PPAs to get video drivers that support one of the various forms of accelerated video decoding, scripts to shut down gnome when xbmc is running because it interferes with rendering for some unknown reason, messing with launchd because it launched programs that rely on all filesystems being mounted before they were mounted... that's just off the top of my head. The hackintosh required a boot cd and a package for drivers that weren't natively supported. Once the drivers were installed, it worked. That's it. Everything that took days of tinkering and forum searching on linux just worked. I have years of experience with linux and this was my first time trying OS X on an unsupported machine. So no, I'm not misinformed and no I'm not trolling, I thought HN was supposed to be civilized :/
        deleted 15y ago
        [deleted]
        lwhi 15y ago
        "[..]You can't say that about Linux" I don't see how you can make a categorical statement declaring that as long as drivers are written for OS X, OS X is more reliable than Linux. Hackintosh != most people's experience of OS X. Your experience will be particular to the hardware you chose, and the implementations you chose to follow. In the same sense, I wouldn't declare that Linux is more reliable than 'X' because again, there are far too may variables involved to make a fair comparison. I think a far more pragmatic approach is to accept that Linux can provide a very robust desktop solution - if the necessary investment in time and research is carried out. Largely, imo OS X is successful because this research has already been carried out on the users' behalf.
        acous 15y ago
        Yeah, maybe "reliably" was a bad choice of words, reliability has little to do with it. I agree that Linux on the desktop can be fine if you have the time to set it up for your needs. I just think that setup time is not much fun after a while and not strictly necessary when you look at how the competition does it.
    - rjbond3rd 15y ago
      > when the drivers are there... That's a big qualification.
      - acous 15y ago
        You'd be surprised at the variety of hardware that's supported. Loads of graphics cards, many sound devices, nearly anything USB, lots of chipsets and CPUs.
        deleted 15y ago
        [deleted]
        rjbond3rd 15y ago
        Hey, what's a good laptop to use, now that the Dell Mini 9 is so old?
    - pyre 15y ago
      How's CIFS/SambaFS or NFS support these days? I remember people spouting how Mac 'just works' when I could easily cause a kernel panic if the mount started timing out (or if I put the machine to sleep without unmounting it).
      - acous 15y ago
        It seems better :) I think the finder was rewritten for snow leopard and I haven't noticed the same horrible clunkiness in relation to slow/unreliable network shares. That said, I nearly always use AFP or SFTP for moving stuff around so those protocols could still be dodgy.
Joeri 15y ago
OK, how about this: if the linux community can tell me which subset of hardware it runs as well on as OS X, I'll buy that hardware and nothing else. I want a linux laptop, with good battery life, stable suspend/resume, solid CPU performance, 3d graphics sufficient for light gaming, and a high-quality fit-and-finish. Which one do I buy?
- qjz 15y ago
  MacBook Pro!
  - sciurus 15y ago
    The latest revision of the Macbook Pro (8.1) is not well supported by Linux. For example, there's no driver for the built-in wireless. Even the older revisions have many features that need manual configuration to work. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MacBookPro https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MacBookPro
- lwhi 15y ago
  I would say, do some research :) I won't deny using Linux requires a greater investment of time than many other platforms. Whether it's worth that investment is up to you. If you do want to make the change, you might as well get used to the disparity now ;)
- mgkimsal 15y ago
  Exactly. The "linux community" doesn't really care if you use it or not, and manufacturers haven't really wised up to the fact that they could possibly sell more if they focused on supporting, say, Fedora X on a limited range of hardware. I suspect that the testing and licensing issues might end up costing them more in the short term than they'd make in increased sales, but I also suspect they'd garner a loyal fanbase and make more $ in the long run.
- aw3c2 15y ago
  Look into Lenovo. The Thinkpad T61 works very well with Linux from what I know.
- 15y ago
CrLf 15y ago
It is, if not only because Windows (NT) also matured during the same timeframe and doesn't run only on a limited set of hardware choices. If Microsoft could do it, Linux could have done it as well. In fact, Linux supports a vast number of hardware component choices and platforms, even obscure stuff. It basically runs on everything, except if that happens to be a laptop or any kind of standard desktop PC hardware components. In 1998, with a much more immature Linux and X11, it was in some ways ahead of the competition. I remember looking for a free computer in my universities' computer labs and when I had to settle for one of the old and slow 486DX machines, being able to run Netscape remotely on one of the Pentiums being used by another student just fine, fast for me and unoticeable for the other guy. Windows NT was a joke back then. It has almost no hardware support. When Windows 2000 came out there were even graphics cards better supported on Linux. But from the Windows 2000 lineage we now have Windows 7, even though Microsoft stood still for so many years with Windows XP. Meanwhile, Linux gained eye candy, when you are lucky enough to get it to work. The desktop evolved, but Linux did not, and the gap is widening. BTW: today the decent graphics card marked is mostly ATI/AMD and Nvidia. OS X supports a large number models from both vendors (even those that were never shipped by Apple). How does that fit with the notion that Apple has a more limited set of hardware to support than Linux does?
- lwhi 15y ago
  The comparison being made was between Apples Unix-like OS X and Linux. In any case, Linux is formed through community - while Windows is formed by a commercial entity. Which features of the 'evolved desktop' does Linux currently lack? EDIT: it seems you've edited your text, and no longer speak of an 'evolved desktop', so perhaps my question isn't relevant anymore.
  - CrLf 15y ago
    "Which features of the 'evolved desktop' does Linux currently lack?" Reliability and usability. Pretty important features, IMHO.
    - lwhi 15y ago
wpietri 15y ago
"Apple design an OS for a supremely limited range of hardware. Your comparison isn't fair." It is totally fair, because each person has to decide whether they're going to use Linux or MacOS. Saying it isn't fair is basically saying that MacOS is and always will be a better desktop choice, because Apple picked a solvable problem and the Linux desktop community didn't. I don't know that's true, but that's definitely what "not fair to compare Linux and OS X" means.
Maro 15y ago
Somebody could try creating a Linux distro that focuses on certain hardware and "just works" on that hardware. Something like "Lenovo Linux" that only works on high-end Lenovo laptops.

by lwhi 15y ago

mongol 15y ago

It might not be fair but at the same time, isn't it true?

lwhi 15y ago
No. Desktop Linux is designed to be device independent. OS X isn't.
- acous 15y ago
  OS X runs on multiple architectures with a wide variety of hardware. You can build a PC out of parts and run OS X on it. Just because the drivers are limited doesn't mean it isn't portable. The thing about OS X is that when the drivers are there, it works reliably and with a minimum of fuss. You can't say that about Linux.
  - lwhi 15y ago
    "The thing about OS X is that when the drivers are there, it works reliably and with a minimum of fuss. You can't say that about Linux." I think you're either trolling or are genuinely misinformed. If it's the latter, please accept my apologies.
    - acous 15y ago
      My relevant experience is with my htpc running linux and my linux/hackintosh dual boot machine. Both machines are fully supported by Linux and the hackintosh is supported by community kernel extensions. Getting linux up and running for the htpc required a lot of fiddling with config files... adding refresh rates to X manually, custom ALSA configs to enable the audio device to show up correctly, accept the correct sample rates and stream 5.1 properly, adding extra PPAs to get video drivers that support one of the various forms of accelerated video decoding, scripts to shut down gnome when xbmc is running because it interferes with rendering for some unknown reason, messing with launchd because it launched programs that rely on all filesystems being mounted before they were mounted... that's just off the top of my head. The hackintosh required a boot cd and a package for drivers that weren't natively supported. Once the drivers were installed, it worked. That's it. Everything that took days of tinkering and forum searching on linux just worked. I have years of experience with linux and this was my first time trying OS X on an unsupported machine. So no, I'm not misinformed and no I'm not trolling, I thought HN was supposed to be civilized :/
      - deleted 15y ago
        [deleted]
      - lwhi 15y ago
        "[..]You can't say that about Linux" I don't see how you can make a categorical statement declaring that as long as drivers are written for OS X, OS X is more reliable than Linux. Hackintosh != most people's experience of OS X. Your experience will be particular to the hardware you chose, and the implementations you chose to follow. In the same sense, I wouldn't declare that Linux is more reliable than 'X' because again, there are far too may variables involved to make a fair comparison. I think a far more pragmatic approach is to accept that Linux can provide a very robust desktop solution - if the necessary investment in time and research is carried out. Largely, imo OS X is successful because this research has already been carried out on the users' behalf.
        acous 15y ago
        Yeah, maybe "reliably" was a bad choice of words, reliability has little to do with it. I agree that Linux on the desktop can be fine if you have the time to set it up for your needs. I just think that setup time is not much fun after a while and not strictly necessary when you look at how the competition does it.
  - rjbond3rd 15y ago
    > when the drivers are there... That's a big qualification.
    - acous 15y ago
      You'd be surprised at the variety of hardware that's supported. Loads of graphics cards, many sound devices, nearly anything USB, lots of chipsets and CPUs.
      - deleted 15y ago
        [deleted]
      - rjbond3rd 15y ago
        Hey, what's a good laptop to use, now that the Dell Mini 9 is so old?
  - pyre 15y ago
    How's CIFS/SambaFS or NFS support these days? I remember people spouting how Mac 'just works' when I could easily cause a kernel panic if the mount started timing out (or if I put the machine to sleep without unmounting it).
    - acous 15y ago
      It seems better :) I think the finder was rewritten for snow leopard and I haven't noticed the same horrible clunkiness in relation to slow/unreliable network shares. That said, I nearly always use AFP or SFTP for moving stuff around so those protocols could still be dodgy.

Joeri 15y ago

OK, how about this: if the linux community can tell me which subset of hardware it runs as well on as OS X, I'll buy that hardware and nothing else. I want a linux laptop, with good battery life, stable suspend/resume, solid CPU performance, 3d graphics sufficient for light gaming, and a high-quality fit-and-finish. Which one do I buy?

qjz 15y ago
MacBook Pro!
- sciurus 15y ago
  The latest revision of the Macbook Pro (8.1) is not well supported by Linux. For example, there's no driver for the built-in wireless. Even the older revisions have many features that need manual configuration to work. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MacBookPro https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MacBookPro
lwhi 15y ago
I would say, do some research :) I won't deny using Linux requires a greater investment of time than many other platforms. Whether it's worth that investment is up to you. If you do want to make the change, you might as well get used to the disparity now ;)
mgkimsal 15y ago
Exactly. The "linux community" doesn't really care if you use it or not, and manufacturers haven't really wised up to the fact that they could possibly sell more if they focused on supporting, say, Fedora X on a limited range of hardware. I suspect that the testing and licensing issues might end up costing them more in the short term than they'd make in increased sales, but I also suspect they'd garner a loyal fanbase and make more $ in the long run.
aw3c2 15y ago
Look into Lenovo. The Thinkpad T61 works very well with Linux from what I know.
15y ago

CrLf 15y ago

It is, if not only because Windows (NT) also matured during the same timeframe and doesn't run only on a limited set of hardware choices. If Microsoft could do it, Linux could have done it as well. In fact, Linux supports a vast number of hardware component choices and platforms, even obscure stuff. It basically runs on everything, except if that happens to be a laptop or any kind of standard desktop PC hardware components. In 1998, with a much more immature Linux and X11, it was in some ways ahead of the competition. I remember looking for a free computer in my universities' computer labs and when I had to settle for one of the old and slow 486DX machines, being able to run Netscape remotely on one of the Pentiums being used by another student just fine, fast for me and unoticeable for the other guy. Windows NT was a joke back then. It has almost no hardware support. When Windows 2000 came out there were even graphics cards better supported on Linux. But from the Windows 2000 lineage we now have Windows 7, even though Microsoft stood still for so many years with Windows XP. Meanwhile, Linux gained eye candy, when you are lucky enough to get it to work. The desktop evolved, but Linux did not, and the gap is widening. BTW: today the decent graphics card marked is mostly ATI/AMD and Nvidia. OS X supports a large number models from both vendors (even those that were never shipped by Apple). How does that fit with the notion that Apple has a more limited set of hardware to support than Linux does?

lwhi 15y ago
The comparison being made was between Apples Unix-like OS X and Linux. In any case, Linux is formed through community - while Windows is formed by a commercial entity. Which features of the 'evolved desktop' does Linux currently lack? EDIT: it seems you've edited your text, and no longer speak of an 'evolved desktop', so perhaps my question isn't relevant anymore.
- CrLf 15y ago
  "Which features of the 'evolved desktop' does Linux currently lack?" Reliability and usability. Pretty important features, IMHO.
  - lwhi 15y ago

wpietri 15y ago

"Apple design an OS for a supremely limited range of hardware. Your comparison isn't fair." It is totally fair, because each person has to decide whether they're going to use Linux or MacOS. Saying it isn't fair is basically saying that MacOS is and always will be a better desktop choice, because Apple picked a solvable problem and the Linux desktop community didn't. I don't know that's true, but that's definitely what "not fair to compare Linux and OS X" means.

Maro 15y ago

Somebody could try creating a Linux distro that focuses on certain hardware and "just works" on that hardware. Something like "Lenovo Linux" that only works on high-end Lenovo laptops.