[NTLUG:Discuss] Mac v. Linux

[Ralph Green, Jr.]

Howdy,

On Tue, 2005-06-07 at 18:32 -0500, Burton Strauss wrote:
> Wrong.  It will be HUGELY visible.  Don't you remember the conversion from
> 68xxx?  EVERY SINGLE application needed to be re-written (at a minimum
  They seem to be doing a few things better these days.  Yes, people
will have to offer fat binaries or two versions for a while.  But, did
you see Steve talk about how quickly Wolfram was able to get their
software to run on an x86 Mac?  That forebodes well.

> Besides, I think you are also wrong on how much commodity hardware will
> creep in.  It's just not cost effective to design a new bus and then new
> North/South bridge chips.  So it's still going to be SATA and USB and PCI
> and DDR.   So while there may be a custom boot rom (BIOS), at some point
> it's going to load x86 code.
> 
  Yep, I bet it will be a pretty standard PC, except for OpenFirmware or
whatever they do for bootstrap code.  I expect they will be sure it is
incompatible with the standard PCs in some way.  It will be enough to
stop Windows from running, but will not even slow down Linux by much.

> I can see a future where there are three viable desktop OS choices -
> Windows, Mac and Solaris - all running on the same cheap Chinese hardware.
> And then there's the oddballs - Linux and the *BSDs.  Which will be used by
> a few die-hards but mostly by people who have cars in their front yards
> sitting on cinderblocks.
  I think you are missing a lot of the reason why people use Linux.  I
have at least a dozen computers running all the time at home.  I sure
don't want to pay $100 to $200 for an OS for each of them, so all but a
couple run Linux.  Even if OS 10.4 turns out to be the greatest thing
since sliced bread, I can't see having more than a handful of machines
running anything but Linux or BSD.  Linux is great because I can bring
back older hardware and make it useful.  Maybe you were alluding to
users of older hardware with the reference to cars on cinder blocks, but
my older computers are running fine.  They are not spare parts lying in
the back yard.  That is one of Linux's strengths.
  And maybe I am an optimist, but I think I am a realist here.  I see a
variety of Linux tools becoming the equal of any in the world.  I
believe we will be seeing more conversions of businesses to FOSS in the
coming years.  And none of your three operating systems are FOSS.
Have fun,
Ralph