9 ms·

I find it humerus that getting osx to run in a controlled environment, useful for testing simulation etc takes more hacking and more work than any Linux distro

I find it humerus that getting osx to run in a controlled environment, useful for testing simulation etc takes more hacking and more work than any Linux distro ever did, even in the early days. Despite this Mac people insists getting Linux to work is "hard" when it mostly works out of the box on any hardware. Amazing.

mentat 12y ago
"than any Linux distro ever did" - Remembering my stack of 32 floppies to install slackware and the level of understanding it took of drivers and hardware, I'm pretty sure that's not true.
- Alupis 12y ago
  yes, circa 1996 maybe...
  - PhasmaFelis 12y ago
    "THAN ANY LINUX DISTRO EVER DID," said josteink. Mentat already quoted it once. I thought it was pretty clear.
- lwh 12y ago
  While I remember "oh no disk 17 isn't working" better re-download and try again tomorrow, this is the closest to that level of pain I've encountered in a long time. What's sad is despite VMs for testing being the norm, the vendor is actively causing pain for devs and admins.
  - mentat 12y ago
    For quite some time I was downloading things over bitnet ftp to email proxy since we didn't have raw IP available. Crazy times...
- asveikau 12y ago
  The difference is, in those days you'd install Linux and maybe you don't get a working sound card or network or modem (since that was a thing). So you have to seek out replacement cards that have drivers. The worst is if your IDE controller doesn't work and it can't find the disk, but that was rare. I guess I also had a motherboard here and there that would cause panics on boot. But, the important point in all of this, is in those days it was never the case that the installation disk was actively trying to prevent you from booting. You usually got somewhere, and the stuff wasn't actively working against you, it was mostly just missing drivers. And of course, today a stock distro kernel has more drivers in it than Windows or OS X, so it is a long time ago that you're talking about.
PhasmaFelis 12y ago
Getting Linux to work on random hardware is certainly harder than getting OSX to run on Mac hardware. That's not an unfair comparison, because those are their intended use cases. You're looking at a Porsche and bitching that it sucks at offroading. Well, yeah. That's not what it's for. If you work offroad and need to carry cargo, a Porsche is not the vehicle for you, but that doesn't mean it's a bad car.
- josteink 12y ago
  That's not an unfair comparison, because those are their intended use cases. You're looking at a Porsche and bitching that it sucks at offroading. Your comparison would make more sense if it was about making a car made by Porsche drive on roads not made by Porsche. Which everyone agrees is absolutely reasonable. What you're trying to sell me is the idea that poor compatibility is a feature? It was designed to have poor compatibility despite being built for a standardized platform, so that makes it a porsche? When I try to get OSX running in our VMWare cluster so that we have clonable, snapshottable machines for testing and debugging and it takes a week of effort not getting it working, you're telling me that's a "feature"? Yeah, sorry. I don't buy that.
  - PhasmaFelis 12y ago
    > What you're trying to sell me is the idea that poor compatibility is a feature? No. I'm telling you that broad compatibility is a feature that is genuinely unnecessary for a significant set of users. I'm not one of them, BTW. I've got my MacBook Pro for toting around, my Windows desktop for gaming, a Linux box for streaming, sharing, and storage, and an Android phone for phone stuff. Each of them does what I need it to. Horses for courses. But there are plenty of people whose use case is "I need an OS that works as soon as I unbox the laptop." For those people, compatibility is not an issue, nor should it be.
raverbashing 12y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humerus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humerus
mhurron 12y ago
What does installing OS X on hardware it was never tested on have to do with the number of Mac users not wanting to use a OS that requires work beyond turning the computer on? Linux is harder than OS X to get running, when you follow the OS X EULA.
- Alupis 12y ago
  Very much so not true: http://fedoraproject.org/ http://fedoraproject.org/ http://www.ubuntu.com/ http://www.ubuntu.com/ Download an ISO and install it. I think you will be surprised. Pop the disk in after burning to a CD/DVD. Click "install", reboot and you are done. Doesn't matter what your hardware is... it will install and work. Other than getting a computer with a pre-installed OS, it really can't get much simpler. Modern Linux Desktops do not require you to do anything but click the "install" button. You don't have to mess with partitioning, packages, etc. You can understand absolutely nothing about Linux and install it easily and use it easily.
  - BillinghamJ 12y ago
    It's at least 100x more difficult than opening a laptop screen and it already being done.
    - josteink 12y ago
      How do you do that in VMWare ESX?
      - Alupis 12y ago
        Not sure your point here... it's actually easier than this mac install on ESX (of course, because it's supported natively with no hackery required). Just point ESX at the ISO and it installs.
    - rlpb 12y ago
      Then buy a laptop with Ubuntu pre-installed on it. Example: http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-13-linux/pd http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-13-linux/pd
justizin 12y ago
"Despite this Mac people insists getting Linux to work is "hard" when it mostly works out of the box on any hardware. Amazing." This kind of divisiveness is not necessary. Clearly you have some dim folks in your midst.
0x0 12y ago
That's probably because it's so new in QEMU. VMWare, for one, have been able to do this for quite a while with the effort of ~1 mouseclick. Edit: Not sure if troll or not?! Getting Linux to run as a guest in Xen 0.0.1 probably took some work, too.
- josteink 12y ago
  VMWare, for one, have been able to do this for quite a while with the effort of ~1 mouseclick. Unless things have recently changed, this is factually incorrect. It might work on OSX, but that's not really the point, is it. For whatever reason, you may want to be able to run a general purpose X86 OS on your general purpose X86 hardware, or general purpose X86 cloud/cluster. For instance, getting OSX to run in a regular ESX cluster (for testing, etc) can't be done wtihout immense amount of hackery, and probably requires custom kext-files, injected on another machine before dumping the image and what not. At this point poor compatibility is just that. I fail to see why someone would try to sell that as something good.
  - 0x0 12y ago
    VMWare Fusion on OSX does it that easy. Nobody's selling OSX as a "general purpose X86 os" for "general purpose X86 hardware" though. It's an OS for Apple hardware. It just so happens that the current versions run on x86_64 CPUs. (Plus I don't think there exists a license allowing OSX to run on a regular ESX cluster. So if it breaks, obviously you get to keep both halves)
    - jbverschoor 12y ago
      VMWare Fusion is isn't all that stable. It works, but I wouldn't count on it.. I have to up until this point.

mentat 12y ago

"than any Linux distro ever did" - Remembering my stack of 32 floppies to install slackware and the level of understanding it took of drivers and hardware, I'm pretty sure that's not true.

Alupis 12y ago
yes, circa 1996 maybe...
- PhasmaFelis 12y ago
  "THAN ANY LINUX DISTRO EVER DID," said josteink. Mentat already quoted it once. I thought it was pretty clear.
lwh 12y ago
While I remember "oh no disk 17 isn't working" better re-download and try again tomorrow, this is the closest to that level of pain I've encountered in a long time. What's sad is despite VMs for testing being the norm, the vendor is actively causing pain for devs and admins.
- mentat 12y ago
  For quite some time I was downloading things over bitnet ftp to email proxy since we didn't have raw IP available. Crazy times...
asveikau 12y ago
The difference is, in those days you'd install Linux and maybe you don't get a working sound card or network or modem (since that was a thing). So you have to seek out replacement cards that have drivers. The worst is if your IDE controller doesn't work and it can't find the disk, but that was rare. I guess I also had a motherboard here and there that would cause panics on boot. But, the important point in all of this, is in those days it was never the case that the installation disk was actively trying to prevent you from booting. You usually got somewhere, and the stuff wasn't actively working against you, it was mostly just missing drivers. And of course, today a stock distro kernel has more drivers in it than Windows or OS X, so it is a long time ago that you're talking about.

PhasmaFelis 12y ago

Getting Linux to work on random hardware is certainly harder than getting OSX to run on Mac hardware. That's not an unfair comparison, because those are their intended use cases. You're looking at a Porsche and bitching that it sucks at offroading. Well, yeah. That's not what it's for. If you work offroad and need to carry cargo, a Porsche is not the vehicle for you, but that doesn't mean it's a bad car.

josteink 12y ago
That's not an unfair comparison, because those are their intended use cases. You're looking at a Porsche and bitching that it sucks at offroading. Your comparison would make more sense if it was about making a car made by Porsche drive on roads not made by Porsche. Which everyone agrees is absolutely reasonable. What you're trying to sell me is the idea that poor compatibility is a feature? It was designed to have poor compatibility despite being built for a standardized platform, so that makes it a porsche? When I try to get OSX running in our VMWare cluster so that we have clonable, snapshottable machines for testing and debugging and it takes a week of effort not getting it working, you're telling me that's a "feature"? Yeah, sorry. I don't buy that.
- PhasmaFelis 12y ago
  > What you're trying to sell me is the idea that poor compatibility is a feature? No. I'm telling you that broad compatibility is a feature that is genuinely unnecessary for a significant set of users. I'm not one of them, BTW. I've got my MacBook Pro for toting around, my Windows desktop for gaming, a Linux box for streaming, sharing, and storage, and an Android phone for phone stuff. Each of them does what I need it to. Horses for courses. But there are plenty of people whose use case is "I need an OS that works as soon as I unbox the laptop." For those people, compatibility is not an issue, nor should it be.

raverbashing 12y ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humerus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humerus

mhurron 12y ago

What does installing OS X on hardware it was never tested on have to do with the number of Mac users not wanting to use a OS that requires work beyond turning the computer on? Linux is harder than OS X to get running, when you follow the OS X EULA.

Alupis 12y ago
Very much so not true: http://fedoraproject.org/ http://fedoraproject.org/ http://www.ubuntu.com/ http://www.ubuntu.com/ Download an ISO and install it. I think you will be surprised. Pop the disk in after burning to a CD/DVD. Click "install", reboot and you are done. Doesn't matter what your hardware is... it will install and work. Other than getting a computer with a pre-installed OS, it really can't get much simpler. Modern Linux Desktops do not require you to do anything but click the "install" button. You don't have to mess with partitioning, packages, etc. You can understand absolutely nothing about Linux and install it easily and use it easily.
- BillinghamJ 12y ago
  It's at least 100x more difficult than opening a laptop screen and it already being done.
  - josteink 12y ago
    How do you do that in VMWare ESX?
    - Alupis 12y ago
      Not sure your point here... it's actually easier than this mac install on ESX (of course, because it's supported natively with no hackery required). Just point ESX at the ISO and it installs.
  - rlpb 12y ago
    Then buy a laptop with Ubuntu pre-installed on it. Example: http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-13-linux/pd http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-13-linux/pd

justizin 12y ago

"Despite this Mac people insists getting Linux to work is "hard" when it mostly works out of the box on any hardware. Amazing." This kind of divisiveness is not necessary. Clearly you have some dim folks in your midst.

0x0 12y ago

That's probably because it's so new in QEMU. VMWare, for one, have been able to do this for quite a while with the effort of ~1 mouseclick. Edit: Not sure if troll or not?! Getting Linux to run as a guest in Xen 0.0.1 probably took some work, too.

josteink 12y ago
VMWare, for one, have been able to do this for quite a while with the effort of ~1 mouseclick. Unless things have recently changed, this is factually incorrect. It might work on OSX, but that's not really the point, is it. For whatever reason, you may want to be able to run a general purpose X86 OS on your general purpose X86 hardware, or general purpose X86 cloud/cluster. For instance, getting OSX to run in a regular ESX cluster (for testing, etc) can't be done wtihout immense amount of hackery, and probably requires custom kext-files, injected on another machine before dumping the image and what not. At this point poor compatibility is just that. I fail to see why someone would try to sell that as something good.
- 0x0 12y ago
  VMWare Fusion on OSX does it that easy. Nobody's selling OSX as a "general purpose X86 os" for "general purpose X86 hardware" though. It's an OS for Apple hardware. It just so happens that the current versions run on x86_64 CPUs. (Plus I don't think there exists a license allowing OSX to run on a regular ESX cluster. So if it breaks, obviously you get to keep both halves)
  - jbverschoor 12y ago
    VMWare Fusion is isn't all that stable. It works, but I wouldn't count on it.. I have to up until this point.