So here we are. Windows 7 launched and it isn't like the whole world changed. We knew it wouldn't. Snow Leopard launched with much less fan fare, but it brought some changes that someone needed to make. A fully 64bit OS that focuses on multi-core technologies as well the disposal of the Power libraries that permeated the Darwin landscape. Windows and Macintosh will be battling this out for many years to come. What changed with Linux?
With the latest release of Ubuntu we saw some major changes. Things have become more tightly integrated, flashier and heavier. Is this the direction we want? Google Chromium has shown us a Linux system that is only a web browser. The newest Fedora and SuSE systems are very similar to the Ubuntu systems. People are trying to compete with both Macintosh and Windows, and while this is good in gaining market share, many of us are getting frustrated with the increasing lack of customizability.
What was Linux? Just another UNIX clone. What was UNIX? UNIX was an operating system that was built of a kernel and tools. Each tool was a small program that did one thing, only one thing, and did that singular task extremely well. There were then interface programs that would use the plethora of available tools to create complex applications. This idea died. With various groups all trying to create the best UNIX-clone the idea of UNIX fell off the face of the Earth. X11, GNOME, XFCE, KDE, GNU in general (think emacs or GCC), and many other groups got rid of this idea. Whether this was a good move or bad move is mostly a matter of opinion. Clearly, however, we are not going UNIX. We are now headed the same direction Macintosh and Windows are. A single program to rule them all. The extreme of this being Google Chromium OS.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
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19 comments:
Uh, you know Macintosh is UNIX and uses the "plethora of available tools to create complex applications", right?
The GNU userspace is what runs a Mac. Apple chose to use non-networked display software instead of X11, but X11 is right on your install disk if you want it (and the additional functionality it provides). You can also switch to Gnome, XFCE or KDE as your user interface, and install both emacs and gcc.
It's the flexibility of the "plethora of available tools" that allows so many variations: OS X, Android, Maemo, WebOS, ChromeOS, Fedora, Ubuntu, SuSE, etc.
As end-users, people don't care about these things. But to the people that build the systems UNIX and UNIX-like systems are a treasure chest of useful tools.
I don't think things are as bleak as you make them out to be. What you're seeing isn't so much Linux/UNIX moving in the MacWin direction, rather it's expanding in that direction, and that's getting a lot of attention because it's relatively new.
The simple UNIX design is still there as underpinnings for even the most graphic distros. Thanks to the GPL, BSD, Apache, X, etc. open-source and free-software licenses, all of that code is still out there, available to whoever wants to make something of it, and will be for as long as anyone who has servers cares to make it publicly available. You can still outfit a server with no X, no graphics, whatsoever, from scratch or from the Debian or other repos, if that's the kind of computing environment that makes you most comfortable. I prefer to run KDE, but most of the windows I open are xterms because that's my comfort level where I'm most efficient.
The choices available to us continue to expand as developers extend the scope of graphic tooling to reach the comfort levels of less experienced computer users. It's an expansion, though, not a swap, because the FLOSS licenses enforce that.
You all might be right except that Emacs is non-Unix philosophy. One app acts as a million. The same as KDE, GNOME, and everything else... it started in a very UNIX manner, but did not stay that way. That was my point. I have a Mac and X11 is installed, but X11 acts as many different applications as well. It's a graphic server, remote connection server, and even an interface for random network protocols. Not very UNIX if you ask me. As far as things expanding in a UNIX direction, this is still somewhat untrue. In UNIX output from one app is always input for another (if you choose to pipe that info anyway). That is NOT possible with many different applications in common use. Sorry.
Wow. A person who's more of a purity troll than RMS. Never thought I'd see one in the wild. OK, here's what you do. Wipe your troublesome Mac OS X. Install Debian. Do NOT install X. Do NOT install a single graphical app. Do NOT install EMACS if it so offends you. There is your UNIX-like system. If you want to do this with an operating system that is acknowledged officially as being a UNIX, then replace all references to Debian with OpenBSD, FreeBSD or NetBSD.
Unfortunately such a machine would be caught in the past without support for anything graphical. Unfortunately the pure UNIX approach to operating systems is obsolete. Even the lowliest netbook has more power than anything that existed in 1970. Anything.
The world is more complicated than in 1970. Computers have way more muscle power than in 1970. Times have changed. UNIX-like approaches to operating system design still have vast superiority over the Windows approach, which is pretty much still single-user with administrative access with sharing bolted on.
When configured correctly, Mac OS X, Linux, the BSDs and any other UNIX-heritage OS has superior security to Windows by its very nature. You also have enough separation between the bare metal and apps to where the OS doesn't get wacky if the app does.
It is wonderful that, when my browser coughs up a hairball, as is the wont of browsers, it doesn't hard lock the system like Classic, pre NeXTStep lineage Mac OS used to.
Live in the past in your pure castle of UNIX if you so desire. Do what thou wilt. But you will find it very tough sledding. It is those very "Swiss Army Apps" that make modern computing possible. Have fun in the '90s.
"What was Linux? Just another Unix clone."
I couldn't imagine of a statement that describes the early GNU/Linux movement (as well as most of the community today) worse!
If somebody doesn't know what I'm talking about, reading the philosophy section on gnu.org could be a good start.
Hold up... I agree with the OP almost completely.
I'm familiar with KDE so I'll drop a line about that.
DCOP and DBUS
Seems to try to follow the UNIX philosophy behind the scenes for GUI apps. Pretty cool shiznit.
To all of you who praise the GUI, I will assume you are for the most part regular users. Because the GUI of MacOS and Windows is probably the biggest pain. Nice that MacOS now has some nice underlying technology but, no, macemoneta, Macintosh is not UNIX. That's really amusing. Macintosh != MacOS != UNIX. while we are at it, FreeBSD != GNU. What the ?!?!?!
KDE has always been very Unixy. You want a function? You create a KPart which can later be embedded in any KDE app. This is the graphical equivalent of stringing together awk, sed, and the like.
Gnome used to be pretty bad (Evolution still is), but the move to GStreamer (with plug-ins) for all the A/V requirements and Telepathy (with plug-ins) for all the communication requirements is a move in the right direction.
In fact, the Unix model is much better for open source development because writing a new media player, IM client, or document viewer for your new desktop is now just writing a front-end to a mostly-complete library.
winter: "Nice that MacOS now has some nice underlying technology but, no, macemoneta, Macintosh is not UNIX."
Mac OS X is actually not just UNIX-like (as Linux is), it is *officially* UNIX, as of Leopard:
http://www.macnn.com/articles/07/08/02/leopard.unix.certified/
First of all things are not as bleak as you see them. Perhaps you are wearing dark sunglasses? :-)
BTW, I think rather than have Linux OSs try to mimic Windows, I'd prefer them being their own selves and aim at providing unparalleled user satisfaction and increased value.
Also, I don't think the over hyped Google Chrome OS will make any significant difference whatsoever in the desktop OS market. If anything at all, it will only create its own niche that it would satisfy.
Linux is not a monolythic thing. The same source code can be compiled and will run on the top supercompters and your mobile phone.
Linux is designed to exist and not die.
To best do this it is moving in all directions and being dominate in a lot of them. We rule the supercomputer market, 3d rendering, 3d animation desktops, web/database/mail server, embeded especially routers etc. we are now pusing into phones, netbook, nettop, desktop.
If an os is good enough to run the new york stock exchange and the london stock exchange it's good enohgh for me.
Only good thing about this blog is the discussion after it... ;-)
Even if MacOSX has UNIX certification(very interesting to find out), that does not mean "Macintosh is UNIX." Macintosh is a brand of computers made by Apple - computers as in like hardware as well. There is a difference between MacOS, MacOSX, and Macintosh(Mac).
@winter,
MacOSX, imho, may have a structure and set of command line utilities that pass the UNIX specifications, but that does not mean that it adheres to the UNIX philosophy. It is part UNIX, part 'other'.
Marketing has successfully differentiated the Macintosh brand in people's minds, apparently.
Ever since switching to generic x86_64 CPUs, the Macintosh is simply an Apple branded generic PC. This makes the "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" commercials particularly amusing, as the only significant difference is the brand (Dell, HP, Apple, etc.).
You can natively run Windows and/or Linux and/or Mac OS X on a Macintosh. Likewise, you can natively run Windows and/or Linux and/or Mac OS X on a PC. The only issue with running any OS on either machine is hardware compatibility.
Both Microsoft and Apple have a vested interest in differentiating their products, to prevent them being considered the commodity products they really are. Once a product becomes a commodity, competition occurs only on price.
Mac OS X adheres tightly to the UNIX philosophy - today's philosophy, not the one from five years ago, not the one from the 1970s. Open a terminal window on a Mac, and you are in the same bash shell and have the same infrastructure as any Linux or BSD machine. The entire OS uses that infrastructure; it's not an add-on (as Cygwin is on Windows).
The only difference is the user interface (Quartz+Aqua). This is functionally the equivalent to Gnome+GnomeShell/Compiz or KDE. To the OS, this is just an application that interfaces to specific hardware (the display). If Apple permitted it to be done legally, that same Quartz+Aqua user interface would run exactly the same on Linux or BSD.
Everything else is marketing and mind-share, which has no basis in reality.
@macemoneta,
you're not entirely accurate. the directory hierarchy is different. path is completely different. most applications do not even get added to path. you have no root access by default, and while trivial it is very un-UNIX. what I am saying is that while it passes as UNIX-spec-perfect it is really very non-UNIX. fwiw, i understand your position. we are really just arguing about some rather esoteric crap. my main pov on Macintosh OS X is that it's non-opensource. I am fine with non-open software, but my blog pertains to open source software only (which bars most UNIX systems anyway).
Yes, OS X is based on BSD. No, it's not UNX-like when you get away from the trivialities in shell. Although the official parts are all pretty well integrated (i.e. the print server is CUPS) you hit a brick wall as soon as you start changing things by hand. The Apple people do _not_ want you in the bowels of their system.
The OS uses POSIX permissions _and_ ACLs so heaven forbid you try to fix a permission with a simple chmod. Configurations are buried in godawful XML type thingie which is only accessible thru black magic incantations in the console, instalation of OSS software thru macports or fink (think FreeBSD ports or Gentoo portage model) can be ugly and complicated if compilation breaks due to unmaintained dependencies...
I always hear a lot about the BSD/UNIXness of OS X. After playing with it for a year or so I'm not impressed. And their locked down GUI makes me feel like I'm confined in a small ugly box where I'm not allowed to change the wallpapers.
Design fascists.
lol. love for skillit. that was the most amazing anti-macintosh rant i have read in a long long time.
i think the usability in linux is constantly improved
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