OSNews

Fedora in the development tree and in FC5 will support this out of the box through the open source broadcom drivers

Thanks Rahul.

I'm curious if you could make any comment.....

do you know what the near future holds in regards to FC5 and if redhat/fedora will be making any contributions to it any time soon?

I know this is Novell's baby(for the most part) but anybody should be able to see that this benefits us all, including red hat.

Just curious. :-P

Edited 2006-02-17 02:34

"
do you know what the near future holds in regards to FC5 and if redhat/fedora will be making any contributions to it any time soon? "

Contributions to what?. Not sure of the question.

"
I know this is Novell's baby(for the most part) but anybody should be able to see that this benefits us all, including red hat. "

How is Novell involved in Intel on Macs?. I am confused now

Because 99% of the population isn't nearly as technically inclined as you are, and nor do they want to take the time to learn something as unfamiliar as a command line. People are generally much more visually oriented.

However, I was more so referring to the fact that an OSNews poster claimed the usefulness of Linux on an Intel Mac wasn't all that hot without a GUI - I realize that the average user doesn't want to touch a command line, and I don't blame them. However, I sure could find uses for Linux on a Mac without a GUI. Just having a machine with both OSX and Linux (and, maybe later, Windows) is fairly useful. While I would like to have a GUI available eventually, the usefulness of a Linux environment is only diminished slightly for people like me (I use Linux all the time for security auditing) - and I'm not that much of an expert, honestly.

Not to knock you, and I agree VIM is great for web development files, editing, etc. Commandline make, etc.

Let me know when you're working via the commandline how your SVG Inkscape file looks.

Or any DTP document for that matter.

Shells and GUI are both necessary to maximize your skillset and make you a more versatile advanced user/admin/developer.

Only the GUI addresses the other 95% of the consumer market.

I agree - I'm actually a professional web and graphic designer (In the Windows/Mac world, however). However, the whole point I was making is that the original POSTER said that you can't do much without a GUI. The truth is, you CAN do a lot, which you have admitted yourself. I never tried to diminish the usefulness of a GUI at all. I was just disappointed to see that an OSNews poster thought that a Linux system without a GUI is useless.

Sorry if I'm not making myself clear enough - I'm not angry, I'm just very frustrated

I still find mc to be the best file manager for me. And if you have a server ssh is enough. If you take in mind the shell script power and you will see that *nix without command line is not that impressive.

he truth is, you CAN do a lot, which you have admitted yourself. I never tried to diminish the usefulness of a GUI at all. I was just disappointed to see that an OSNews poster thought that a Linux system without a GUI is useless.

Sorry if I'm not making myself clear enough - I'm not angry, I'm just very frustrated


I write Kernel and firmware code in c and assembly for a living and spend 90% of my time in obscure debuggers, vim and some CLI or the other.

Let's not forget an iMac is an all-in-one desktop that is supposed to be the digital hub in an home. It has a webcam built in and a remote control. Mactel-LInux at it's current stage won't make use of 80% of it's features. Therefore it is fairly useless.

Don't get me wrong, this is a great effort and much needed too. Even if it is just to prove that Apple made no effort to cripple the hardware for other OSes to boot. Eventually linux will have all the support to make the iMac intel more of a useful linux desktop machine. But let's just see this effort for what it is, as an initial stepping stone.

I fail to see where the discussion of CLI vs GUI usefulness fits into the story just posted here. What really should be discussed here is the technical details of the hardware and the support for them in linux and the next steps for the project.

Edited 2006-02-17 15:49

Not to knock you, and I agree VIM is great for web development files, editing, etc. Commandline make, etc.

Let me know when you're working via the commandline how your SVG Inkscape file looks.

Or any DTP document for that matter.

Shells and GUI are both necessary to maximize your skillset and make you a more versatile advanced user/admin/developer.

Only the GUI addresses the other 95% of the consumer market.

Actually, you can have a fairly usable machine using Linux without a GUI. There are links/lynx for your browser needs, mutt and/or pine for your mailing needs, slrn for newsgroups, ncftp as FTP client, centericq and several other ncurses IM clients, several multimedia players (including mplayer that can be used on a frambuffer for viewing videos!), vi/emacs for your usual text editing, ncurses front-ends for cdrecord, several P2P clients whose core are usually a command line tool anyway (such as giFT, for instance) and a lot of other things, not to mention the usual suspects to admin your own box (that are usually done on the CLI anyway).

And you can run all that stuff inside GNU screen, which will let you you run them all at the same time (For those that don´t know, screen works more or less as a WM for the shell console). And all that can be used inside a SSH session (with the exception of utilities that require a framebuffer device. SSH can´t do that).

Sure, your rodent would become almost useless at this point, you wouldn´t have a lot of fluff and you could not work on your images using Blender, Inkscape or GIMP and also you would need to remember a lot of keystrokes to become more productive but I´m sure that you´d be surprised seeing how much you can get from a Linux machine set up that way.

there are links/lynx for your browser needs

Good.

Let me know how useful lynx is at the following sites:

http://www.apple.com/trailers/

http://community.livejournal.com/scans_daily/

http://maps.google.com/

http://www.etfconnect.com/marketwatch/interactivecharting.asp

I was pretty sure that someone would try to pull this one. It was quite obvious. Listen, I wasn´t implying that such setup could effectively replace the GUI in all cases but look at it this way: I can read OSNews, my local newspapers websites and several others _useful_ websites (meaning, those that rely on content instead of the latest whizz bang) in a browser like that perfectly.

Even if I wanted to appreciate some pr0n, I could do it using something like w3m, which is a ncurses-sorta browser that can display images inline in webpages (using svgalib, I guess).

I know that it won´t let you watch movie trailers in Apple´s website, but hey... You do that for a living? I wish I could have a job like yours... ;-)

But the catch here is that, while you resorted to such low blow as an argument, you couldn´t come up with similar arguments against the other cases presented in my previous post because, being someone tech savvy, you do know that those works just as fine as their GUI counterparts, just a little bit ugly and in a different fashion if you wish.

Maybe people don´t know how to do that today, but they knew back then when all that they had to use was DOS with Wordstar, Lotus 1-2-3 and DBase III Plus. I´m sure that the average Joe and Jane Blow wouldn´t settle for this nowadays but people like me and you could use it just fine through SSH to bypass some corporate firewalls or during a disaster recovery or even for fun, to see where you can get using such tools. My point was that a computer is not useless without a GUI. Far from it, actually (if you´re using Linux, that is! :-))

EDIT: Typos (but I´m sure that I missed a lot of them...)

Edited 2006-02-17 06:37

"Only the GUI addresses the other 95% of the consumer market."

First of all this is work in progress. Before you can have a GUI you need to boot the kernel. And you need the CLI shell. So X not working yet means just that, that it isn't working *yet*.

Now, without X a GNU/Linux system can still be useful to a lot of people. I have a few friends who will gladly run any OS that supports Emacs, for example. Yep, that's not 99% of the market; and it doesn't matter. I don't think anyone expects world domination by running free software on Apple hardware.

99% of the population, but certainly not 99% of the people who consider this news. Most of your 99% probably doesn't even know what Linux is.

Why do you NEED a graphical environment to do anything?

Yeah, because the CLI, that's just the peachiest environment for editing pictures and video.

And the CLI, it's the bestest for looking at flash, or streaming video, or pictures. (Which I actually need to do a regular part of my job.)

Because yeah, whover said a picture was worth a thousand words was an ignorant know nothing wanker.

Well, you could always use aalib
http://aa-project.sourceforge.net/aalib/

There is an aalib mplayer backend for your movie playing needs and an aalib version of quake is available as well.

What scares me is that you're probably serious about that suggestion.

VLC/WMP take care of my movie-playing needs. Not AAlib. That's like suggesting that a go-cart with pedals and a bicycle chain will take care of your daily transportation needs.

Read my follow up replies. I do realize that my semantics were a bit flawed in the sentence you quoted, but I do end up clarifying myself.

Read my follow up replies. I do realize that my semantics were a bit flawed in the sentence you quoted, but I do end up clarifying myself.

Yes, and once upon a time there was but one way to interact with the computer, the CLI.

But that's a relic from a time when we had no idea of the incredible things we would ask a computer to do, every day tasks that the CLI cannot do.

A lot of what I ask my computers to do is stuff that's either impossible with the CLI, or is crippled by lack of images.

Since I'm not a network admin, if you handed me a computer with nothing but a CLI you have handed me a hopelessly crippled machine.

Yeah, and some people can do things with the CLI that you don't even know are possible.

Please people, open your minds a little: X will work fine on GNU/Linux systems on Intel Apple computers. But that's the next step.

So, kadymae, as you yourself put it, the crippling factor here is your skill level, not CLI. The original comment was stare at a CLI screen, implying it was USELESS. This is hardly the case. CLIs are very useful. Infact I work faster on a cli doing everyday stuff then I do with the GUI. I am no network admin either, I am just inquisitive. Before you write the CLI off, try and use it properly first. The CLI is indeed the core of *nix user experience. It is the advantage *nix has over windows. Even if all else fails you know the trusty old console will let you fix your computer or do some troubleshooting work.

Also the person who posted the article has lost all credibility in my books for coming up with something so silly that only a newbie would say and I have no interest in reading a newbies opinions.

Or you could be even more of a real man and just GNU Screen.
:)

> Hell, the only reason any real man needs a GUI is to
> have 5 shell prompts going at once.

This can be done from text login too...

Ctrl+Alt+F2 for shell 2
Ctrl+Alt+F3 for shell 3
Ctrl+Alt+F4 for shell 4
Ctrl+Alt+F5 for shell 5
Ctrl+Alt+F1 for shell 1 (the former)

at least this is freebsd.

HA! This proves the inadequacy of freebsd, then!

On linux the CTRL key is useless: just ALT-Fx and off you go, if you are already at the console.

Oh, and I was almost forgetting: freebsd is dying!

(just joking, ok? ;-D )

Alt-Fn are all that are necessary to switch between virtual consoles in FreeBSD. People become used to applying the ctrl to the sequence from X usage, probably.

GNU screen is the best way to work with multiple virtual terminals. You can detach, easily copy data between terminals, split the viewable area of one terminal into multiple regions for viewing multiple terminals at once, and it even works on Windows.

Now that Linux is starting to work on the Intel iMac, I am wondering how long before we can see comparisons between Linux, Windows and MacOS X.

On the same machine? Probably not until Maxxuss finishes his patches.. unfortunately it looks like OSX (final, not developer builds) will run on regular PCs before Windows runs on Macs.

Any tests run on a frankenbox would be of questionable value though since the patches necessary make changes to a lot of stuff. If such a test was run though, I would hope it was on a box that is as close as possible component wise to the Mac.

Why not compare GNU/Linux running on PPC with Mac OS X? (which is in fact has been done several times before).

Why not compare GNU/Linux running on PPC with Mac OS X? (which is in fact has been done several times before).

Right. Comparison between Mac OS X and GNU/Linux exists.

My 2 nagging questions (for me is)

1. Since x86 is the most optimized architecture on Linux, it would be interesting to do the comparison on the x86 platform. An interesting side is to see if the results in PPC comparison is seen on x86 also.

2. Having MS Windows get thrown into the gauntlet in the future would be quite interesting. The ability to compare Mac OS X, MS Windows and Linux on the same machine should give some interestng results.

flav2000,

Re:Now that Linux is starting to work on the Intel iMac, I am wondering how long before we can see comparisons between Linux, Windows and MacOS X.

This isn't really necessary. Unless you're unaware the hardware being used in the Mactel systems is using the same Intel Core Duo processors used by other vendors such as Dell. The only difference is that Apple decided to go eith EFI instead of the standard BIOS method for the motherboard. So as long as all the specs are equal it should be possible to benchmark for example a Dell Inspirion 9400 with Microsoft Windows or Novell SUSE Linux versus an Apple MacBook Pro with OSX Tiger. The only disadvantage would be if someone were to benchmark the Toshiba Satellite P100-JR5 Core Duo laptop which is capable of supporting 4GB PC2-4200 DDR2 (2048MB PC2-4200 DDR2 x 2 DIMM).

It's a bit old but...
http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=2520 gives some impression.

How about Slack on an IntelMac. */me drools*

Why bother reading the article that Thom submitted and participating in this thread if the info is useless to you. Move on to something else instead of complaining.

because this site runs around a community. This is like a saying kernel developer saying "Ah, why bother with fine tuning SMP, I only have a one processor machine that I use, I will just move on to something else."

It is my duty as a member of this community to speak up when I think someone might be saying something inaccurate. I maybe right or wrong, if I am wrong others will correct me. In the end, in community based projects, quality control is a responsibility of the members.

As much as playing "Are we happy when we're fighting?" can be amusing, this isn't really a community, and certainly isn't worth investing energy into. And to be directly to the point, the original poster was whining.

If you have a problem with the editorial decisions of the staff, maybe you should e-mail them instead.

Because linux is my OS of choice, and because no beats apple hardware: where would find such a powerfull, so thin, light and stylish notebook?
Ok they are expensive, but a sony vaio also is (I think the vaios are also very stylish, but they don't feel the same way as the apple powerbooks/macbooks)..

gnobuddy,

Re:This is NOT intended as a troll or to start a flame war, but I have come to the conclusion there is only one major thing OS X actually does better than Linux: it runs commercially available software such as Photoshop, Maya, etc.

To clarify for those not familiar with Maya it runs on Linux (officially supported on Novell - SUSE Linux/NLD and Red Hat - RHEL) as well Windows XP Professional and OSX (PPC but not universal for OSX x86). The Mactel systems come with Rosetta which can run software compiled for PPC on them but highend developers such as Alias have already stated they don't recommend emulation as performance and stability are issues.

As for other commercial software available for artists using Linux distributions please see "Software for 3D/2D Artists, Designers, etc." http://www.linuxforum.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=53452

Re:While OS X looks more polished than many Linux distro's do out of the box, you can tweak KDE to look like OS X - but not the reverse. Which GUI is more powerful, then?

At this time the majority of desktops run Microsoft Windows due to previous monopoly tactics which I won't reiterate here. Anyway as such I would be less concerned with "eye candy" and appreciate that KDE resembles Windows desktop UI so as to ease migration both for enterprise as well as private markets. Windows , not OSX dominance on the desktop globally is one of the reasons Novell is making Gnome for NLD 10 and SUSE Linux 10.1 (soon to be released) closer resemble KDE, thus resemble Windows which makes migration easier. You should be able to see a reaccuring theme which is make the migration to Linux easy for consumers. The difference when compared to Microsoft is that major developers such as Novell and Red Hat will continue to ensure security is a priority over simplicity as compared to the poor track record of Windows.

Re:While my Linux boxes are easily configured to print over our home network (we have a laser and an inkjet printer on the network), my wife's Mac has never managed to get this to work - despite the printer being listed as supported, and despite the fact that the Mac uses CUPS for printing - the same software my Linux boxes do. The Mac simply fails somewhere during the printer configuration, with no useful error messages to help diagnose the problem.

I have a friend that is what I would class as a Mac fanatic though he's no hardware Guru. Anyway he has no difficulty running printers/scanner hardware. It could either be an issue with your hardware or PEBKAC I would suggest you call Apple support or your reseller to see if they can assist with your LAN.

Re:I could go on and on, but in addition to OS X being a closed, proprietary operating system running on closed, proprietary hardware, it simply does not seem to do many things better than Linux does - and it seems to do quite a few worse.

I'll agree with your last comment for the most part. Flexibility for consumers is key over eye candy. Yes consumers want to know their software and hardware will run with minimal fuss but the reality is this is possible with Linux distributions such as SUSE Linux and even Windows. The difference being the EULA is very strict with Microsoft and Apple where with Linux it's very flexible. TCO also plays a big factor when a consumer seriously considers what each company has to offer them. I've used all three platforms and can honestly say while Linux distributions such as SUSE Linux are not perfect I've had less headaches with Linux as well kept more money in the bank due to lower TCO.

I've had similar experiences, just that the 2 machines are mine ;-).

And aboutt the polish, compiz and xgl will make all these discussions history !

Haha! Your the man! Well said.

You deserved that mod up!

I hope hardware manufacturers read OS News.

Eh.

People break things and return them. People would brick WRT45Gs and return them, for example.

People want hardware to be supported by driver development. Either costing the company to develop for a fringe market, or expecting them to release their "proprietary information" for the development of drivers.

People will be "too savy." Not buy things that are clearly a poor value, because they understand market options.

People go against the grain. You could buy a game and run it in Windows, but people want to fill forums and e-mail boxes with "Are you going to port to Linux? Why haven't you ported to Linux? Why not have icculus port your game to Linux?"

So the sword cuts both ways. People using Linux can be just as annoying as they can be a potential source of revenue. There are no shortage of people with a lot of disposable income that will just use Windows. It's easier/cheaper to just pick the low-hanging fruit.

The Mac OS X interface is certainly *not* perfect. The behaviour of the maximize button in Safari is one of the examples that I remember - it makes the window so high, that the resize control gets hidden under the dock!

He thinks it's perfect because it works for him. And I think Enlightenment is perfect because it works for me. Big surprise that's only opinions. But he's right about one thing: the looks of the GUI mean nothing. I happen to find E16 one of the most fugly environments around, but it's a pleasure the way it works.

Edited 2006-02-17 12:06

There's a lot more to GUI design than aesthetics and being able to change it's look doesn't say anything about it's power. It doesn't matter what you can make KDE/GNOME look like when their design has so many problems. When KDE/GNOME users spend a lot of time tweaking the look of their GUI, adding copies of the OS X Dock and transparency effects for example, the phrase "trying to polish a turd" always comes to mind. Of course Linux GUIs are good enough for many people, but it's laughable to compare such a badly flawed and inconsistent interface to one as elegant as the Mac OS X GUI.

I cannot speak about GNOME, but when the previous poster said that he can make KDE look like a Mac, he meant that he can make it come close to the usage pattern that you get on a Mac. Take the menu bar as the most outstanding example, where you can dettach it from the applications' windows and put it on the top of the screen, just like a Mac. From that point onwards, KDE applications (and only KDE applications, sadly) will behave just like a Mac as far as the menu bar is concerned.

The use of drag-n-drop is pervasive and when you have XDND-compliant applications, you can even drag some songs from a Konqueror window and drop them on the XMMS/BMP playlist window and have it populated by the songs that you dropped there (Try it, if you don't believe me!).

I agree that some people go out of their way in order to make KDE look like a Mac with some half-baked themes (Baghira could use some improvements) and dozens of Mac-look-alike thingies like Kooldock and a expose-like virtual desktop switcher with varying results that range from great looking to so-so. I'm partially guilt of that as I use the old High Perfomance Liquid theme, which is the base for Baghira, because I like its looks with the Baghira window decoration. But that's the extent of my Mac-ification of my desktop, everything else remains plain old KDE defaults.

Yes, I know that the menu bar is not everything about the Mac experience. There are lots of subtle details like fonts size and spacing, visual and sound notifications, well defined layouts for apps, etc. but my point is that you can achieve results near to those found on the Mac on KDE as long as you're willing to look for them and changing them to your liking.

All KDE applications and most Qt ones allows you to customize the shortcuts of all the menu items. With some effort, you make the desktop adapt to your usage habits and not the other way around. That's where KDE has an edge on every other DE that I've seen and I believe that this is what the previous poster was talking about.

What I'm missing on linux is the overall Look and Feel.
There is GTK / GTK2 / QT / TCL / whatever and all look different and have to be customized on there own!

I dont want my xmms file browser look different than my openoffice browser than my firefox browser... Sure I can use only gnome or kde apps but there are still applications that are not gnome/kde customized.

Also I want ONE clipboard and not TWO (Middle mouse and CTRL+C)!

"...it's laughable to compare such a badly flawed and inconsistent interface to one as elegant as the Mac OS X GUI."

Whatever... OS X may be elegant, but at least in KDE I can resize a window as I want and not only using the right botttom corner, just because Apple designers always know better. I can also rename or delete a file within the file selector, I can use multiple desktops, I can use focus follows mouse... and I could give you a thousand examples more of why I'm more comfortable with KDE.

I'm getting quite tired of the whole "OS X is the holy grail of desktops" thing. I'd take KDE features and funcionality over OS X pretiness any day of the week, thank you.