The Mac mini offers a viable platform for embedded multimedia development. In this article, Lewin Edwards shows how to make efficient, direct use of the framebuffer to display JPEG files and discusses the issues involved in deciding between direct framebuffer access and using the X server as a graphics driver. Part I of this series can be found here.
I’m all for hacking standard boxes for specific task, but why nuke the pre-existing *nix based OS for another one. One of the common problems I find with Linux installs is lack of hardware support for devices. Out of the box OSX has full hardware support & due to its BSD underpinnings just about any OSS app can be ported to it. So, what exactly does he gain by taking this route ? He appears to be making a rod for his own back !
Well, there can be numerous reasons.
Learning, for example, how to do this can prove useful. Also, I tend to see that a lot of people consider OS X to be THA SUPERIOR THING and thinking that it is just plain stupid wanting to use another thing… This is not the case in this article (he is using the mac mini for specific thinkg), but what if I like KDE and want to keep using it? Under linux? Maybe I want a free-as-in-freedom OS, maybe I want to be able to tinker, etc…
Get over it people, OS X is not THE perfect thing for everyone, and even if OS X was free as in freedom and ran perfectly in every platform that linux runs now, there would still be other OS’s and they would have people using them.
Let’s rephrase it from another view:
Well, there can be numerous reasons.
Learning, for example, how to do this can prove useful. Also, I tend to see that a lot of people consider Linux to be THA SUPERIOR THING and thinking that it is just plain stupid wanting to use another thing… This is the case in this article (he is using the mac mini for specific thinkg), but what if I like OS X (even Windows) and want to keep using it? Maybe I want a easy OS, maybe I want to be able to tinker, etc…
Get over it people, Linux is not THE perfect thing for everyone, and even if Linux easy as a Mac and ran perfectly in PPC now, there would still be other OS’s and they would have people using them.
“but what if I like OS X (even Windows) and want to keep using it? ”
My point was, then by all means, do it… If you want to use windows / zeta / skyos / freedos / msdos / os2 / etc, do it!
You are twisting what I said.
yeah, just like the mac mini. of course you can run a mailserver on it, but what for?
anyway, cool series.
1. Person A asks why someone might want to use something other than OS X.
2. Person B responds with a set of possible reasons.
3. You respond by creating a straw man.
If you’re hacking the box for your own use, then sure it probably makes sense to leave OSX installed. However, it seems to me that the author is using the Mini as a low cost PPC development platform for commercial development of a custom embedded device. After all, he did give special warning about the patent problems that can arise if you’re pursuing a commerical product.
I don’t have the OSX EULA in front of me, but I’m sure there’s plenty of terms in it that would preclude using stock OSX in a commercial appliance. Even assuming that Apple would license it to you for that purpose, why would you bother. Using something like Darwin, *BSD, or Linux would be simpler & cheaper from a licensing standpoint.
OSX support few hardware
Linux run on majority of hardware
I can’t think of one thing that Linux can do better than OS X on a Mac. “Free as in Freedom” is irrelevant.
MySQL, Apache?
http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=2436&p=4
And I’m a self confessed Mac zealot. I administer a lab of Macs, I still have use for FreeBSD/Linux…